Truth Distorted: On the Media’s Manipulation of Testimony and the Erosion of Justice
The erosion of justice on one hand, media distorting into ghostly faces whispering falsehoods on the other, and we are taking notes.
In a just society, the trial process exists not only to determine guilt or innocence, but to protect the fundamental principles of fairness, evidence, and truth. Yet, what happens when those principles are not only bent in court but further distorted in the public domain by the press? What happens when truth is sliced into convenient fragments, shuffled and rearranged to serve a narrative that the evidence does not support?
This is precisely the crisis at the heart of Joseph Spencer’s case.
Two articles published by the Telegraph & Argus, amongst others like the DailyMail—“Seven years jail for Fifty Shades of Grey sex beast who abused Bradford teenager” and “Fifty Shades of Grey fan ‘dressed teenage victim in bondage gear and took pictures’, Bradford Crown Court told”—make use of selected courtroom quotes that, when isolated, seem damning. But when examined alongside the full trial transcript, in the context of an autistic man with communication deficit that struggles to use the right words in the right contexts, their power dissolves. What the public is never shown is the context—the complete chronology, the full nuance, the cross-examinations, the contradictions in prosecution claims, and the evident absence of any victim testimony alleging abuse.
What emerges from the court record is something radically different: a prosecution built on opinion, not fact; inference, not evidence. And the video evidence the police produced to the court, according to both participants in the video, was not the original video and falsified by the police to present a false narrative to the court.
And yet, none of this complexity made it into the newspapers.
Instead, the prosecution’s theory was adopted wholesale by the media and repackaged as established truth. This is not journalism—it is a form of ideological stenography, where the police and CPS’ accusations are reported as fact, and any testimony that disrupts that narrative is ignored, buried, or spun as further incrimination.
This is not just an injustice to Spencer and his partner—it is an injustice to truth itself.
We do have a collective problem as a society, it is the Problem of “Narrative Conviction“
Philosophically, what we are witnessing is a phenomenon known as narrative conviction: the point at which a carefully constructed story overtakes evidence in shaping public and judicial opinion. Narrative becomes king, and once the public accepts a version of events—especially one involving moral panic or social taboo—truth is no longer discovered, but managed.
In Spencer’s case, we see how courtroom dialogue was fragmented, reassembled, and presented in a context that deliberately omitted what didn’t fit. The quotes, while some are real in form, were actually false in implication. The media, bound neither by oath nor by cross-examination, assumed the role of final judge.
But real justice demands more.
In a functioning democracy, the press serves as a check on power, not an arm of prosecution. When it abandons that role—when it becomes a conduit for unchecked CPS and Police narrative—then truth becomes subservient to story, and people become collateral damage in the name of moral theatre.
In Spencer’s case, the Prosecutorial Opinion is Not Legal Fact.
It is vital to distinguish what the prosecution says from what the law proves. A prosecutor may offer an interpretation of events, speculate on motive, or paint a picture meant to sway a jury. But none of this becomes fact until it is substantiated by objective evidence and due process.
Spencer was convicted not on physical evidence, nor on eyewitness testimony of wrongdoing, nor on any allegation made by a victim claiming harm—but on a prosecution theory that itself relied on interpretations and inferences. This foundation was weak. Yet the media, either unaware or uninterested in legal nuance, repeated the theory as gospel and gave the public no chance to see the difference.
What the media presented was not the trial—it was a play based loosely on courtroom material, written by those who never bothered to read the whole script.
What the public, especially those that were quick to make derogatory and abusive comments in those articles failed to see is this: The Shield of Legal Immunity.
Adding insult to injury is the reality that the press, despite misrepresenting the case, enjoys near-total legal protection under qualified privilege and public interest exemptions. But they are not immune to judicial review and their day in court is coming, definitely so. This means they can publish half-truths and prosecutorial opinions, however damaging, without being held accountable—so long as it was “fair and accurate,” a standard easily manipulated when no one audits the full context. Those articles are serving a purpose right now. When it’s time to call it quit, we will act accordingly and as expected.
The question we asked ourselves is this: What Now?
Joseph Spencer’s campaign is not merely an effort to quash a wrongful conviction. It is a challenge to the deeper societal machinery that enables such miscarriages to occur and persist unchallenged. It calls for the public to rethink what it means to be informed and to recognise the media not as the final word on justice, but often as its first distortion.
There can be no meaningful justice without meaningful truth. And truth cannot survive in a culture that tolerates lies wrapped in quotation marks.