Twitter reporting in the Connecticut trial case

Web 2.0 and other social media platforms have become more than socializing and advertising media and this was revealed in an innovative way during the first trial of those accused in the Connecticut murder trial case where the wife and daughters of a resident doctor were brutally killed. Dr. William A. Petit Jr. is a Cheshire resident whose wife and daughters were assaulted and then left to char in the house which the miscreants set on fire. Dr. Petit was also tormented physically but he survived the catastrophe his family didn’t. The trial went underway and the final verdict in the case was announced last week, more than three years after the incident took place in the year 2007.

Due to the brutal nature of the killings and the heart rendering testimonies, the court had prohibited media from using any kinds of television cameras inside the court room to record and broadcast the trial. Instead, the new age tech savvy journalist found an innovative way to report the proceedings of the trial by way of tweeting every new formation or information. Even the minutest details like the convulsed expression on Dr. Petit’s face while recounting the incidents or the layout of the court room were relayed in 140 character expressions.

People all over the country stayed glued to their twitter feeds in order to follow the trial to its depth and some televisions even broadcast the live twitter updates tweeted by their reporters attending the trial.  The television and newspaper editors said that the phenomenon isn’t a new one as on various occasions people and journalists have resorted to using Twitter to get the news across but they did agree that the practice acquired an entirely new dimension during the murder trial of a Cheshire doctor’s family. Perhaps this is the convergence of traditional and contemporary media the media stalwarts have been talking about since a decade.

The ubiquity afforded by the Twitter cannot be paralleled by any other means of media reporting, in situations where camera and microphones are banned. The reporters were seen quickly and constantly typing on their iPads, laptops, palmtops and smartphones. It is in a way an unvarnished form of media journalism where the reporter has to act in the capacity of an editor, monitoring the content before it is set as Twitter update. In cases like these, there is no time left for the editors to intervene and regulate the content and this enhances the responsibility for the reporters who have to decide upon the propriety of the feed while lost in the frenzy of reporting the most important development first.

Steven J. Hayes was convicted in the murder case on the grounds of capital murder and 15 out of 16 charges were proved against him. The jury will decide the sentence during second session of the trial on Monday, October 18, 2010.

Posted by Ken Bosket on Sunday, October 17th, 2010. Filed under Internet, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry