Cross Examination I: Final Results, Conclusions, & Where to Go From Here

It took me some time, but I finally did it—all the nonfiction movies on my list have been watched and analyzed with my research method. Here’s the data that garnered!

As I already discussed in my previous blog posts, the movies continued a trend of opting to show prosecution in a negative light more often than defense. Before I continue, let me explain a new bit of my method that I added: in order to ensure I could make an overall judgment of bias for my movies, I decided to include a points system. I would give each movie a +1 for any anti-defense pieces of dialogue and a -1 for any anti-prosecution pieces of dialogue, then sum it all up for a final value. If a movie has a final negative score, I will categorize it as anti-prosecution; if a movie has a final positive score, I will categorize it as anti-defense; and if a movie has a final score of zero, I will categorize it as neutral.

With this method, I was able to make a broader judgment of bias. Out of 17 movies, nine had more anti-prosecution points than anti-defense, with four movies neutral. Only three movies were found to have more anti-defense points than anti-prosecution, and when looking at the themes that arose from the categories, it is also evident that the themes of anti-prosecution are of a higher severity. Below, you can see a table of categories for both anti-prosecution and anti-defense.

Interesting to note is how anti-prosecution themes, especially racial discrimination, seem to speak to a systemic problem, while anti-defense themes suggest more of an individual problem, although there does seem to be a trend against public defenders. Next, I’ll be looking at if this trend continues or diverges in completely fictional movies!

Think about the initial curiosity that led to your inquiry. What other areas of inquiry might that same curiosity lead you?

I envision two alternative paths: one, an evaluation of the representation of the justice system as a whole, not just lawyers, in popular media; or two, an evaluation of bias against either defense or prosecution in the context of news media. I think both of these would be interesting to consider for future projects!