期刊名称：International Journal for Court Administration
印刷版ISSN：2156-7964
电子版ISSN：2156-7964
出版年度：2011
卷号：3
期号：1
出版社：International Association for Court Administration
摘要：Courts and Judges and the Media A recurring issue for courts is their public credibility and the trust the general public vests in the courts. Justice administration managers occasionally hold on to the idea that trust of the general public in the courts is something that can be steered by the courts and the courts’ management by organization development, and that public trust in the court will follow automatically as a consequence of those efforts. National and local organization- development programs like in France and the Netherlands have been set up in order to make the people believe that courts are good and delivering their state bound services well enough. This assumption has been proven wrong repeatedly again in different countries. Public trust in organizations fulfilling a state function can be an incredibly complex concept. What the courts do is of some importance, but what others say or report about courts is also relevant. Newspapers and television programs sometimes magnify single issues to radical proportions. Miscarriages of justice are amongst the most important issues to be reported upon, but so are auxiliary functions of judges (like a judge being a member of a school board or on an advisory hospital board), and efforts to have a certain judge disqualified by some party. Thus, incidents become the image of the judiciary as a whole. This happens wherever a free and not always completely accountable press reports on the judiciary, for example in France, the Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland and the USA. In some countries, where judges are not appointed but elected directly or indirectly by voters, political affiliation and sponsorship of judges for election are part of the debate about the judiciary.
