On Chongqing Media Trial Extended From "Xiao Yalin Case"

In2010, a four year-old girl called XiaoYalin was badly injured by her stepmotherwith a stick, which attracted wide focus by the media of Chongqing. By reporting, fromthe time the incident occurred on September12to November19, just over two monthstime, her stepmother Weng Guangyou was convicted of guity. In this case, the identityof "stepmother” has undoubtedly been magnified. The media’s intentionally orunintentionally biased guidance has influenced the trial of the court by the impact ofpublic opinion.Our country has been practicing the concept of the rule of law, media trial isundoubtedly contrary to this philosophy. From2001, many experts and scholars beganto realize the question, the media trial has thus gradually been well known. Law has aset of strict justice system, when the media go after the intervention, more or less it willaffect the normal operation of this system. Media, public opinion or hotspot coverage ofevents is necessary, but it need to be clear that the unreasonable influence to the trailshould be avoided during the report.In this paper, from the view of XiaoYalin event, by the means of case studies, andthrough the theory of comparing, the spiral of silence theory, Potter box model, and thephenomenon of "no obligation respondents" summarized by the author, we will analysisthe reality and essencial of Chongqing Media trial, and then we try to explore solutionsto the problems.