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Sunday Night vote on Oscar Pistorius demeans us all

Killer or not? Now TV networks are happy to let you vote before the trial ends.

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oscarpTV Networks, it seems, are now comfortable with viewers voting on the guilt or innocence of accused murderers.

Sunday Night ran a viewer poll throughout its story on Oscar Pistorious last night asking “Did Oscar Pistorius deliberately kill his girlfriend.”

Reeva Steenkamp, left unnamed by the straw poll, was shot and killed at the home of her boyfriend in South Africa in February 2013. The sensational trial has been underway in Pretoria since March, scrutinised by media at every turn.

Last night Sunday Night ran ‘world exclusive’ footage of Pistorius re-enacting the night of her death in a report by Ross Coulthart and Steve Pennells.

But asking Australian viewers to cast a vote on a man’s guilt or innocence, largely based on a television re-enactment, diminished the report. While the voting showed a divided audience, it begs the question: where do we draw the line?

Is it acceptable to turn a murder case into a viewer vote because it is in another country and not under Australian jurisdiction?

Would we have accepted TV viewers voting on the guilt or innocence of an Australian on trial overseas? Rolf Harris? Or what about Queenslander Tyson Dagley who faced a negligent homicide charge in Hawaii in 2012 after a skijet crash?

What happened to innocent until proven guilty and allowing justice to take its natural course? Cheap stunts like this, in the race for viewer interactivity, take us closer to a TV colosseum.

But Seven will likely face bigger concerns. Anneliese Burgess, a spokeswoman for Pistorius, said the athlete’s legal team was “seeking urgent clarification” from Seven about use of the footage, prepared by an American firm called The Evidence Room.

It has already been described as “a staggering breach of trust.”

18 Responses

  1. This country is not under South African judicial law so there shouldn’t be any issues about a TV show here giving their opinion on whether he’s guilty on not. Don’t forget channel 9 did the same thing with Schapelle Corby and no one seemed to complain then.

  2. I too would find him guilty if I look at the case in isolation from my comfortable Australian home position. However our family has business contacts in SA and one of our contacts has “Shot dead 2 carjackers in broad daylight”. The carjackers fled taking the bodies with them, he reported it to police, nothing became of it. I would say to the naive Australian “You just do not know what the f*** it is like living in a country with the massive crime rate of South Africa is, you are an idiot and would be killed if you didn’t shoot first ask questions later” you have to look at every case through this fact, and looking through this fact I realise that Oscar is far from guilty, but maybe reckless. The worst he will convicted of with a mainly white and middle class black jury is causing death through misadventure: Murder is not an issue.

  3. i don’t know if it was some mistake, but i def saw a promo for a story on the case for this coming Sunday night. Have only seen it once a few nights ago, wasn’t paying alot of attention so is this a new story? or did they stuff up & play the old promo?

  5. I agree with the comments about the law catching up with the times. I am not sure how they are going to do that though unless they get rid of juries & have a panel of judges decide a case. The idea of juries is a little prejudicial in the first place especially where jury service is compulsory. Its counting on that the members will care enough to make an effort, or will they just go along with whatever to get it over with as soon as possible so they can go back to their regular lives. Or will they have the mental capacity to sit through many hours of detailed evidence.
    Not that the ownus should be on the law, it should be on the networks feeling some sort of moral responsibility. But such is the way of the media, or some of them anyway. Though i do think an international ban on any media opinion polls on a persons guilt or innocence could help.

  6. As I had my rant about Network Seven and all this in ‘Davids’ other well reorted item about ‘Sunday Night defends their Pistorius footage’ I will only say here, that Network Ten have ‘Judge Judy’ and Network Nine have ‘The Peoples Court’, seems Network Seven opted for a bit of a hybrid of both, where the ‘Judge’ presiding over the ‘Pistorius Trial’ is female, and the ‘Peoples Court’ has the polling of opinions from non-involved observers.

  7. Excellent article and the angle is right. I felt physically ill when I saw that a poll was taken. This just shows how poor their judgement truly is. May the dipstick who thought this a good idea be sacked, and may they be “Channel Second” forever.Scum,
    :

  8. There is a huge difference between discussing the topic at hand and putting it to public vote. The latter, which was used, was in rather poor taste regardless of how much material was shown for and against with evidence.

  9. That’s rather harsh @mason. Chris Bath did nothing more than introduce the story and read the poll information off the autocue. Point the finger at the producers.

    If there was a jury involved perhaps grounds for a mistrial @PJ’s Ronin but there is no jury and an experienced judge like Thokosile Masipa won’t be influenced in the slightest by the footage.

    The poll was wrong in every sense of the word.

  10. Does it matter is Seven shows a poll or not?
    The same stuff has been all over internet for months and people think about it and discuss it.
    There is no way South African courts can control what is said outside of South Africa.

    Innocent until proven guilty applies to criminal sanctions. These days little consideration is given to it outside of courts and people are routinely punished for things they haven’t been convicted of, or which aren’t even a crime.

    The idea that you can stop juries finding out about things you don’t want them to became impossible by the end of last century. Legal systems are going to have to recognise this and adapt to the times.

    The idea that you can conduct trials that run for 6 months, force people to be on the jury and then lock them up in gaol if they use their phones, tablets or computers is crazy and unworkable.

  11. Legislation is not the answer. if people watch they will do it and the Australian public (1.29 million) wanted it. I think it proves what we are becoming as a nation. We are the nation that has elected a government that is now disappearing people.
    Calling Chris Bath a journalist after that story is quite a stretch.
    It was actually quite a watershed moment for Australian TV I think. Not a good one.

  14. The internet has linked us all together so that we are but a mouse click away from news items appearing on the other side of the world. Whilst courts try and insulate juries from external influences, the almost total reach of current media makes this a daunting task to say the least.

    I would not be surprised to learn that Pistorious’ legal team are salivating at what 7 has done… mistrial anyone?

  15. Kent Brockman: Now, here are some results from our phone-in poll: 95% of people believe Homer Simpson is guilty. Of course, this is just a television poll which is not legally binding. Unless proposition 304 passes, and we all pray it will.

  17. TV networks in Australia are their own worst enemy. They copy each other bad ideas, the ones that viewers hate the most, and then turn it up to 10

    Hate to say this, but I think we need some strict legislation about how FTA TV runs
    – running programs on time
    – reduction/removal of watermarks, including the ones that advertise other programs
    – news overhauls to stop sensationalism
    – removal/reduction of home shopping programming
    – mandating picture quality settings and technical settings
    – banning of advertising during news broadcasts, and a minimum of 30 minutes of news broadcasts in primetime

    I could go on…

  18. Whether it was right or wrong to ask the public to vote, it is obvious that the people that did vote thought it was right, other wise they would not have voted.

  20. Let’s take a poll.

    Do you think Channel 7 are again scraping the bottom of the barrel, and should they fire the offensive little ‘worm’ who chose to put that poll up?

    Yes/yes.

    And in 20 months, ACMA will slap the network on the wrist with a soggy piece of paper

  21. Im not sure what the fuss is all about. The program was simply asking what we would have been asking around the water cooler anyway. However i do think it should have been asked once at the start and then at the end not all through out the report.

  22. Thought it was questionable enough showing the footage never mind running a poll. Even though it’s in another country it is still enough to possibly jeopardise the trial.

    Just a shame the networks can’t show the same kind of social responsibility sites like this have, where in light of recent high profile UK court cases involving Aussies you’ve treated them in the same way you’d treat a case in Australia.

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