A Lie Etched in Print: The Media’s Fabrication of Tears
It is not uncommon for moments of injustice to be accompanied by fictions designed to render the condemned not only guilty but also broken. Among the many distortions surrounding the case of Joseph Spencer, one particularly persistent falsehood stands out: the claim published by the Daily Mail and others that he “wept loudly” as he was led to the cells at Bradford Crown Court.
This is untrue.
No tears fell. No sobs were heard. Spencer was not weeping, but stunned—grasping, in that moment, the depths of a judicial error so profound that it had already begun to reveal its cracks before the verdict was read.
By the second day of trial, Spencer—deeply aware of the incongruities and violations in the proceedings—began making shorthand notes in a private system of notation only he could understand. This act of self-representation caused a visible disruption in court: the jury, having previously made no notes, came back into courtroom with notepads and writing with heightened attention. When Spencer stopped, so did they. This strange synchronicity raised troubling questions about the independence of the jury and whether his so-called “peers” were, in fact, part of a predetermined performance.
What occurred next cemented his resolve. His partner’s witness testimony, previously dismissed or sidelined, introduced a critical tool that would later form the basis for his challenge to the conviction. Spencer knew then what he had to do in the event of a conviction in any of the charges brought against him. The path to quashing the verdict was not theoretical—it was forming in real time.
So why, then, the lie? Why would a national newspaper describe a man who was clinically alert, intellectually engaged, and emotionally resolved as someone reduced to visible weeping?
The answer lies not in fact, but in narrative.
To portray a man as broken is to affirm, in the public’s mind, that the system works—that guilt produces shame and punishment results in submission. A man standing upright, pen in hand, face unflinching in shock but not despair, disrupts that narrative. It confronts readers with the idea that perhaps justice has not been done, that perhaps the accused has not been defeated. And this is an idea too dangerous for some to accept.
Philosophically, this misrepresentation reflects a deeper pathology in modern public discourse: the desire to finalise judgment not just through law, but through sentiment. To claim Spencer wept is to ascribe weakness, remorse, and acceptance of guilt—all without evidence, and all in service of a psychological architecture built to shame, isolate, and discredit.
But Spencer did not cry. He questioned. He observed. He resisted—quietly, legally, and with awareness that public narratives are often the last walls to crumble even after truth has emerged.
The lie of tears will not stand. It is a fiction with no place in fact, and one that reveals far more about those who created it than about the man it attempts to malign.