What is the significance of field studies that assess the saturation of a news story in a community? In this context discuss the Oklahoma City bombing case.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers may vary.Serious crimes attract extensive news coverage, typically from the prosecutor's view of the case. Field studies, a research technique favored by trial consultants, can assess the saturation of a news story in a community by polling people about their knowledge of an actual crime. In some instances, polling occurs in the community where publicity is assumed to be widespread, as well as in jurisdictions farther from the crime, allowing for comparisons between respondents in two or more locales.Whether surveying opinions about notorious crimes or cases of only local interest, these studies consistently find that persons exposed to pre-trial publicity possess more knowledge about the events in question, are more likely to have prejudged the case, and are more knowledgeable of incriminating facts that would be inadmissible at the trial. On rare occasions, when a field study demonstrates that the volume of publicity has been overwhelming and when a crime has touched the lives of large numbers of local residents, a judge will have no option but to move the trial. This is illustrated by the Oklahoma City bombing case.The bombing, the heroic actions of rescue workers, and the arrest of McVeigh all generated a tremendous amount of publicity. Predictably, McVeigh's defense team requested that the trial be moved from Oklahoma City to a more neutral (or at least a less emotionally charged) locale. As part of their motion to move the trial, McVeigh's attorneys enlisted the help of a group of psychologists to provide information to the court about the extent and type of publicity in the Oklahoma City newspaper and in the papers from three other communities (Lawton, Oklahoma, a small town 90 miles from Oklahoma City; Tulsa; and Denver). Their media content analysis identified all articles pertaining to the bombing in these four papers between April 20, 1995, and January 8, 1996, and coded the content of the text, including positive characterizations of victims, negative characterizations of the defendant, reports of a confession, and emotionally laden publicity. They also measured the number of articles printed in each paper and the amount of space allotted to text and pictures (United States v. McVeigh, 1996). The data were compelling. On the basis of this analysis and other evidence presented at the hearing, Judge Richard Matsch moved the trial to Denver. In June 1997, McVeigh was convicted on all 11 counts and sentenced to death. He was executed in June 2001.