Media in New Hampshire’s sexual assault trials
Anyone following the David Meehan and the Youth Detention Center cases will notice some strange double standards in media coverage. WMUR live-streamed the David Meehan civil trial in April 2024. But it did not live-stream the criminal trials of former YDC employees James Woodlock and Stephen Murphy. The court granted exclusive access to the trials to WMUR but one witness in the courtroom of Stephen Murphy’s trial noted that WMUR had the camera turned off and pointing at the wall.
It would be good to know who makes these decisions and why.
My concern is that the use of media pretrial and censorship of trial media in these high profile sexual assault cases in New Hampshire has ended up steering judicial outcome. The result means that both complainants’ and defendants’ interests become secondary to another interest — sensationalism, propaganda and censorship. These erode public trust in the courts.
I first discovered this use of media to influence judicial outcome in State v. Owen Labrie through statements made in the Concord Monitor by Councilwoman Amanda Grady Sexton. She is married to the political director of WMUR, Adam Sexton. WMUR had been granted exclusive TV access to the trial. The trial transcript differed extremely from the media coverage. The NHCADSV had been involved in deciding what was fair or not to report. Paige Sutherland’s tweets from the courtroom for NHPR had been used in an exhibit for a motion (granted) to restrict live coverage.
Can YDC civil or criminal trials be considered “fair” with this kind of media influence going on at the hands of the NHCADSV and/or public officials with a undue influence in the judicial outcome?