They Won't Forget

    Since the dawn of the daily press, many people have long wondered how newspapers help shape what we think is the world around us. One of the most popular forms of newspapers "influencing" or shaping the public is a trial by the media. A trial by media is the impact of television and newspaper coverage on a person's reputation by creating a widespread reputation of guilt or innocence before or after a verdict in a court of law.  There have been notable examples of this with the OJ trial, the Mendez brothers, and, even more recently, the Amber Heard vs. Johnny Depp trial. These cases were massively televised and covered, lending the way for heavy media scrutiny and the reporter's opinions. The impact of the trial by media is shown heavily in the film. They Won't Forget. In the movie, the D.A. Andy Griffin, with the help of reporter William Brock, used the media to help get Griffin a big win in court to help boost his political career. Throughout the film, Brock and Griffin single out Robert Hale as their main scapegoat and use all the media influence they can to get him prosecuted.

    One of the film's first examples of media manipulation is towards the beginning when the police arrest Tump Redwine, a black school janitor. When the media caught wind of this, they put in the newspaper "Negro held in suspicion" as the headline. While negro was the "appropriate" term for African Americans at this time, the problem with this headline is at the time, whenever a black person was accused of a crime, they were always seen as 100% guilty in the eyes of people no matter the evidence especially if the crime was against a white woman which this one was. The newspaper knew what it was doing with this headline it could have been a man arrested and being held on suspicion, but the newspaper wanted the people to know it was a black man so they could demonize him. Later in the film, this headline is actually used to the cops and Griffin's advantage because they essentially intimidate Redwine into saying Hale was the murderer and if he chose not to, he would take the blame, and sadly at that time, a black man would likely lose that trial almost all the time.

    Another angle that Griffin used was that of the north vs. south. Hale was from New York and moved south to teach at a college. Even though the Civil War has long been over, the south still holds a lot of resentment toward the north. The south thinks the north thinks they are better than the south just because they won the Civil War; this way of thinking has turned to hatred of people up north. We see this, especially with Hale, with how they treat Hale, especially the name-calling they attack him with just because he is from up north. At the film's beginning, we see that Hale is still learning the southern ways since he was teaching on Confederate Memorial Day, which is usually a day off. The north vs. south is played up even more in the media when Hale's lawyer is also from the north, and the newspapers keep forcing the fact that Hale and his lawyer are from the north. The press says you are a "traitor" if you support Hale; since he is from up north, all southerners must be against him, or they are not true southerners. This way of regional thinking was prevalent; people were proud of their roots and origins. Especially after the Civil War, the south wanted to maintain its culture and identity, so they safeguarded and even made regional holidays like Confederate Memorial Day. 

    In the end, Griffin and Brock's strategy worked. Hale was sentenced to death, but on the way to his execution site, the governor decided to commute his death sentence and instead just punish him to life. Sadly, however, the people think Hale deserves death, so they abduct him from his train and kill him. Following his death, Hale's wife meets with Griffin and Brock, and in the meeting, she tells them that they are responsible for having her husband killed, not the mob. The mob was just a puppet of the media at that point; they were so mad that their sister was killed that they would just believe anything, even if there was no reason behind it, so when Hale became the scapegoat of the trial, of course, they would accept it especially since no other newspapers were even publishing conflicting viewpoints. Griffin and Brock might not have made the killing blow to Hale; they definitely played a massive part in his murder.

    People back then and even now are so susceptible to media manipulation we hear one thing on the news and take it as truth or an absolute fact. While the news will likely not lie to us, they will word questions and events in specific ways to make us think one way or another. Now with the advent of social media, this problem can be easily fixed by us diversifying our new sources; if we look at sources on both sides of the issue, we will eventually find the truth in the middle while it may take some more work on our part it is better than us speaking confidently on a topic we know nothing about. Some sites and sources can even help us see how biased and credible the news source we read, listen to, or watch is.