Media’s role essential to justice

RE: No more Bosma coverage and No more photos of Bosma accused

As I read these letters I wondered exactly why either writer would even buy a newspaper.

The first questions why we need to “review every minute detail of the situation” of the trial and bemoans the fact that The Spectator can find “nothing better to write about.” Well, I can think of few things more important than reporting on every aspect of this most bizarre and tragic case.

One of the keystones of our justice system is the transparency of court proceedings and it is the reporting of these and the presentation of all the facts publicly that assures that justice is done or else serves to expose miscarriages of justice. To suggest events like this should be ignored (in favour of what exactly, more recipes or pictures of smiling people?) would be to naively assume that good people are doing the right things and that every court decision will be correct.

I would ask the writer to consider their own reaction if the case concluded with an opposite decision to what they might have presumed. Without review of every detail made public, they would have no way to figure out what could have possibly caused such an apparent miscarriage.

And as for the other writer who feels that there should be no photographs of the accused, I suggest that if this trial concludes the way that it must, assuming the prosecution can prove its course of events, then seeing the pictures of those charged might well serve to educate many on just how deceptive can be the face of true evil. Robert Sorrell, Caledonia