how can essential rights such as the right to a fair trial conflict with other rights such as the right to a free press?
Such conflicts often happen. Corruption of the jury pool by the printed word is frequently avoided by prohibiting the attorneys from giving interviews and the like. Obviously false or untrustworthy evidence needs to be kept out of the trial. No permanent harm is done as the matters can be published when the case is over. All Constitutional rights are subject to reasonableness requirements and often must be balanced against each other. For example, your right to practice your religion may conflict with the right of the state to prohibit certain drugs. Whether your right may be honored must be determined by balancing the interests involved by the judges. Your right to free speech ends at my private property line. It could have been balanced differently, and occasionally is. So you see, Constitutional rights conflict all the time.
Because your right to a fair trial involves having an unbiased jury. Recently, media reports have been able to report very filtered and skewed accounts of trials, (sometimes even flat-out doctoring or manufacturing evidence); that issue aside, however, the point is that the media often caters to the uneducated, easily moved to passion and mob rule. These people, once agitated out into the streets by mere catch phrases (see, e.g. armed only with skittles or she was party animal and drowned her baby.) will often impose serious pressures upon a jury, who know which way the impassioned public wishes them to vote. There have been more recent reports of death threats against jurors in publicized cases, for not voting the way some member of the public wanted. And beyond all those serious yet rarer risks, there is a good chance the jury pool will, at the least, have heard the tainted media's poisonously biased story before coming into trial, and may have made up their mind already. Thus, freedom of the press can hurt your chances of a free trial. In the name of such, the press might be temporarily restrained from getting access to the evidence. This invariably infringes on freedom of the press. And thus the two duke it out, the press trying to stress the need for transparency when in reality they merely want to twist the story into the most one-sided -- and thus entertaining -- story of injustice, which will boost ratings and inciddentally have idiots marching in the street, demanding the death of whoever the media arbitraily chose to portray as the bad guy. Though (as you can probably tell) I am biased against the media interest, those are still the competing concerns.
When the press covers a trial, including before hand, it can bias the jury pool. And their presence in a courtroom can also influence a jury. For example, the OJ Simpson case, the Casey Anthony case, the Zimmerman case - all with significant influence by the press. If the press biases people, then the accused could have difficulty with a fair trial.
I'd be guessing you could be asking about the guy who did the video some people didn't like. He was in America and America has free speech laws, therefore if he's ever brought into court for this matter he could not be charged with regard to free speech. He could, however be charged with inciting a riot if the riot were in America and if there were laws against inciting. If he was not an American citizen then there might be some new situation back in the country he's a citizen of. Otherwise I don't think there is a case, but you'd have to ask attorneys what they think.
If you want a good and straight answer how can one suggest about a video and we hear nothing of that? I do not want to see or know, except that it exists. We can all go from there. Is this a porn video and were you an abuser in this? You leave too much open for anyone to be legally correct. Earl
