While I was getting coffee this morning I notice that on the cover of the Vancouver Sun it read Pickton jury candidates to face scrutiny, which was followed by…

“Potential jurors for the trial of accused serial killer Robert (Willie) Pickton will face a more intense screening process than normal to ensure trial fairness and juror impartiality, the trial judge ruled Monday.�

Now, I am certainly not defending Robert Pickton. What I am defending is his right to a fair and impartial trial. In this city, let alone Province, you’d be hard pressed to find someone who hasn’t been indoctrinated by the media’s coverage of this matter, nor swayed to believe that Pickton is, without question, the guilty party. In the end that may very well be the case, but while I glanced the paper I was more contemplating the modern reality of guilt and innocence in our society. There is one based on the law itself, which is little regarded primarily because it rarely makes for good copy. There are countless cases of individuals found honestly innocent of crimes in a court of law who are forced to spend the rest of their lives being seen as guilty in the court of public opinion. And that is not to say that, in some cases, the law doesn’t get it wrong - the OJ Simpson matter comes to mind. But even since then, there is no denying that the media’s ability to sway public opinion and help form conclusions based on inaccurate, invented, or incomplete information is a reality in our society. And that is not the purpose of the fourth estate, despite what those who concern themselves with advertising revenues might believe.

The Application On A Greater Scale

As many are now aware, the run up to the invasion of Iraq was filled with what we now know were outright lies. For example, the CIA’s findings with regards to most of the Bush administration’s claims were not supportable. Uranium in Africa? That claim might have been accurate well over 12 years prior to when it was made. Connections with a variety of terrorist organizations, including al-Qaeda? Never substantiated by anyone other than the White House Iraq Group, and certainly not the Central Intelligence Agency, with whom Saddam Hussein’s regime had a pre-existing relationship. And yet, various members of the Bush administration said, in no uncertain terms, that the United States possessed hard, supportable facts that Hussein’s regime had, among other things, a viable WMD program.

Outgoing Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld remarked prior to the invasion that any nation with an active intelligence capability knew that the Hussein regime possessed weapons of mass destruction. Vice President Dick Cheney went one step further, flat out claiming that the United States knew that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

The fourth estate, which exists in any free society to question such assertions, basically acted as sales representatives for these falsehoods. Even Congress, which should have vigorously debated the issue, debated nothing.

In the eyes of most Americans, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, posing a direct threat to the United States, and had connections to not only al-Qaeda, but the attacks of September 11th. Those lies, even though proven lies before the Presidential race in 2004, were still not widely exposed or challenged by the media in the United States. Instead, the convolution of patriotism was used to confuse and deflect, resulting in what can only be viewed as one of the greatest political feats in modern history – the re-election of an American President based on a platform of proven lies.

If, as Gwynne Dyer has asserted, the Think Tank has become one of the preeminent influences on modern policy, then surely the media must be counted government’s Trojan Horse.

In the end, in America’s majority court of public opinion, Iraq was guilty. And even though all of the evidence provided them was false, an entire nation has been made to pay for their inability to be responsible enough to do what each and every one of us must if we are to claim ourselves at liberty – think for ourselves.