I spent years of my life waiting to find out whether a courtroom would agree with the truth. In that time I learned something most people never have to: the trial that decides how the world sees you doesn't happen in a courtroom at all. It happens online — in headlines and comment sections, months or even years before a judge ever rules. By the time you finally get your day in court, most people have already made up their minds.
That's what people mean by "trial by media." I didn't really understand it until I was living inside it.
What trial by media actually is
Here's the simplest way I can put it. Trial by media is what happens when reporters, commentators, influencers, and regular people online decide someone is guilty before the facts have actually been tested. No cross-examination. No rules of evidence. No burden of proof. Just a verdict, handed down fast and loud, that sticks whether or not it's true.
None of this is new — sensational crime stories are older than television. What's new is how fast it moves. One accusation can reach millions of people in an afternoon, shaped entirely by whoever posts first. And once that version of events takes hold, good luck changing it.
It breaks the one rule that matters
The reason it matters so much is that it quietly breaks the one promise our legal system is built on: innocent until proven guilty. Not innocent until someone accuses you. Not innocent until it trends. Innocent until the state actually proves its case.
When a story dominates the news for months, the people who might one day be asked to judge it fairly have already absorbed a narrative — and you can't fully un-hear something you've heard a hundred times. Long before any verdict, the accusation alone can cost someone their job, their savings, their relationships, their name. I watched a version of "me" get built online out of early reports and assumptions, and it barely resembled what the facts would eventually show. That version doesn't get an apology. It doesn't get a correction. Even after you're cleared, a lot of people never hear that part.
I'm not speaking from a textbook
I say all of this from experience, not from a textbook. I was accused in a case that got national attention, and after years of fighting it, I was cleared of every charge. I know what it feels like to have your life decided in public long before it's decided in a courtroom.
I'm not doing this to relitigate my own case — that chapter is closed, and I've moved on. I'm doing it because what happened to me happens to people every single day, and most of them don't have a platform to say a word about it.
What actually needs to change
So what do we do about it? I don't think the answer is attacking the press. A free press matters. So does a fair trial. We're supposed to be able to have both. To me, that means reporters treating an accusation as a claim and not a conclusion — and covering how a case ends as loudly as they covered the arrest. It means the rest of us remembering that "arrested" and "guilty" are not the same word. And it means actually practicing the presumption of innocence instead of just quoting it.
None of that is radical. It's the system we already say we believe in. We just have to mean it — online, and not only in the courtroom.
The bottom line
The verdict matters. But so does everything that happens before anyone walks into that room. If we really care about justice, we have to care about the trial that plays out in public — because for a lot of people, that's the only trial whose verdict ever really sticks.
Cole Goldberg is an advocate for due process, fair trials, and the presumption of innocence. Cleared of all charges after a nationally covered case, he now speaks and writes about trial by media, public perception, and criminal justice reform. Book Cole for media or speaking.