Explain as well if the media’s role has undermined the search for justice, and if so, what might one do about the problem.

Your answer to the question you select should come from the PowerPoint lectures and the subsequent Thursday discussion materials. These have covered a little more than a dozen trials. You do not need to indicate in the exam answer where the information is coming from if it is drawn from a PowerPoint lecture. If information comes from an assigned document, just give the document name briefly after that material is put in the answer or by working it into the sentence (as in: As Thomas Preston said in his statement about the Boston massacre…..). Direct quotes of assigned sources must be in quotation marks (but you do not need to use quotes from sources) and the source made evident. [Wikipedia has been used as an assigned source, and to the extent that it has, you can work from these online essays – but you are not expected and not encouraged to use any material beyond the lectures and the discussion documents.]
Write on ONE of the two questions listed below:
1. A number of the trials we have studied have had a significant “political” component. Using at least two such trials from lecture and discussion to support your answer, explain what it means to call a trial “political.” Is it always the case that a political element in a trial leads to an unfair outcome? Did it in the examples of trials that you described?
2. From our first week on the Boston Massacre through our most recent class on Salman Rushdie, the media has played a crucial role in making a trial a “famous trial,” although the specific impact has differed from trial to trial. Using at least two examples from lecture and discussion, explore the impact of the media on trials. Explain as well if the media’s role has undermined the search for justice, and if so, what might one do about the problem. [As a number of you wrote papers on the media in a specific trial, we need to repeat here that you can answer this question, but do not use the trials about which you wrote in your paper.]

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