Word: raped
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...suppose that, instead of a student taking an exam, you are a rape victim. You have pressed charges and your case is going to trial. Faced with a hostile attorney interrogating you about intimate and painful subjects, you tension is orders of magnitude greater than that of a student facing only an empty blue book...
...wake of the Smith rape trial in Florida, the role of the mass media in American courtrooms must be reexamined. Is it a good thing that a woman who claimed that she was raped had her blacked out face broadcast by every media outlet from CNN to Saturday Night Live? If not, is it a necessary evil, the only alternative to which is government censorship...
THERE ARE TWO POSSIBLE ways to argue for intensive broadcast media coverage of trials, rape or otherwise. One is consequentialist: claiming that courts work better when they know they are being watched. The other is categorical: invoking a public right to know or a right to untrammeled free press. As applied to events such as the Smith rape trial, neither of these arguments makes sense...
...rape trials were secret, maybe more rapists would go free (which already happens all the time) and more innocent people would be convicted (which also happens, albeit less often). Nobody is saying that the trials should be secret. Anyone who wants to can go watch, and all the proceedings are matters of public record...
Everyone knows that the glare of television lights amplifies pressure and makes clear thinking more difficult. Rape victims are nervous enough testifying in public courtrooms; describing one's own rape to total strangers, in the presence of the rapist, while a lawyer tries to destroy the testimony will make anyone tense enough. CNN on the scene only makes it worse, and there is no "openness" interest to cut the other...