Who's Afraid of Cameras in the Courtroom

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703964104575334831068223478.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

by grellas • 16 years ago

17 24 16 years ago

online.wsj.com

anigbrowl5• 16 years ago

Anyone who thinks this is a good idea will be quickly cured by watching 5 minutes of Entertainment Tonight...or indeed, most local news broadcasts.

I'm very much against censorship and think the 1st Amendment is one of the cornerstones of American life, but in a few matters I am unable to shake off my European upbringing. One is Court TV shows like Judge Judy where they re-enact small claims hearings for entertainment purposes. Another is mugshots and 'perp walks' released to or conducted for the media when someone is arrested. While the suspect very often turns out to be the right person, I'm just horrified by the fact that someone can be identified and displayed publicly as a prisoner before they've even been arraigned and entered a plea. It creates a presumption of guilt among the general public and (IMHO) is a direct cause of lawyers following up by holding press conferences and making statements designed to sway 'the court of public opinion'.

Public opinion occasionally yields treasures like the Declaration of Independence, but is equally enthusiastic about everything from riots to the idea of buying a pet rock. Excuse my cynicsm...this topic brings out my grumpy elitist like few others!

gills4• 16 years ago

* Article I Section 1.

All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. *

Regardless of our respective opinions on the matter, I don't see an [honest] interpretation of the above which gives the court (a) legislative power to (b) abridge the freedom of the press [within it's on courtrooms].

epochwolf3• 16 years ago

(Don't add spaces to the asterisk)

    *like this*

not

    * like this *

hugh3• 16 years ago

I'm not sure that stopping you from carrying a camera into a courtroom counts as limiting the freedom of the press. Courtrooms are special places, and very different rules apply there. Heck, the judge doesn't have to let you in at all, if he doesn't feel like it.

seregine• 16 years ago

The court is not Congress (or a legislature).

anigbrowl5• 16 years ago

That argument depends on showing how photo/videography of courtroom proceedings would provide substantially more information to the public than textual or graphical reportage does now. Is the public going to be any better off by having access to recording of a judge's furrowed brow or the steely glint in a prosecutor's eye? Because past experience has shown that such trivialities are the sort of material that gets replayed over and over on TV.

More seriously, consider the fact that people's attractiveness varies considerably, and a large part of our media is built upon selecting for visual attraction. What effect do you think that televised trials will have for plaintiffs, defendants, or witnesses who are ugly, or have a speech impediment, or whose attorney would come last in a beauty contest? It's a well-known fact that simply being taller correlates strongly with victory in presidential elections. Televised coverage of an emotive case mandates developing a 'charismatic strategy', and selecting for counsel and testimony based on their favorable visual impact - after all, this is the essential function of the casting process in narrative filmmaking (where I work). Once you go down this road you might as well go all the way: 'Your honor, I move for an extreme close-up of the witness, emphasizing his shifty gaze!' 'Objection! A cutaway to the defendant's cringing posture is clearly in order!'

On a more general note, your literalist reading of the 1st Amendment would grant the press the right to do anything at all - burst into your home while you're on the toilet, raid your bank account, murder people on live TV, and start shooting wars in the name of public curiosity about the potential outcome. By this logic, anyone who declares themselves to be a publisher and has an inkjet printer or a blog is exempt from any constraints as long as they provide regular updates on their field of interest. Strict construction that leads to absurdities is no better than implicit assumptions about the judicial branch's freedom to establish standards for its own operation.

nym• 16 years ago

Are good artists prohibited from drawing in courtrooms? I'm not familiar with the rules, so I'm curious if a photo realistic artist could draw the scene.

anigbrowl5• 16 years ago

Short deadlines and photorealism are not very compatible.

shasta• 16 years ago

Maybe we should require all video be run through a cell-shader pass before it airs

anoved• 16 years ago

Courtroom artists serve exactly that function - to sketch the scene in courtrooms where cameras are not allowed, for distribution through the news media. I'm not sure what the trend is but I wouldn't be surprised if it is a waning profession, given increasing number of courts that allow photography/video.

kd0amg• 16 years ago

It can't be fear of pre-trial publicity: Major trials are front-page news, with or without a video feed, and the days of the blissfully ignorant jury pool are long gone.

It can still be fear of exacerbating an existing problem. That said, would this be mitigated by only allowing release of the footage after everything is over?

epochwolf3• 16 years ago

> That said, would this be mitigated by only allowing release of the footage after everything is over?

I'd recommend only releasing the footage if the person was found guilty.

dedward2• 16 years ago

How about neither - there can always be a retrial and/or appeal and/or exoneration by other means.

anigbrowl5• 16 years ago

...and has exhausted all appeals, and...

I know I'm being grumpy about this, but I just don't see what public good will be served by such a move. I can't think of any clear benefit the televised coverage has brought to the legislative process, and extrapolating from existing coverage of the courts I suspect the vast majority of airtime would be spent on catering to the most prurient sort of public curiosity.

If one considers McLuhan's famous remark that 'the medium is the message,' it's hard to ignore the fact that the medium of television is awash in sensational trivia, relies heavily on emotional manipulation of the viewer to construct a compelling visual narrative, and frequently oversimplifies complex issues to the point of distorting the facts. Now this is no more the fault of broadcast technology or infrastructure any more than lies are the fault of the speaker's larynx or distant relatives; but the sad reality is that a great deal of television is the intellectual equivalent of a sewer, and whatever you drop into a sewer is going to end up getting dirty. It's a problem that law and the legal process are so obscure and inaccessible to the public - but not one that will be solved by turning courtrooms into studio sets.

mattmanser• 16 years ago

I don't get it, did a moron write this piece?

In 1965...[the Supreme] Court found that cameras had a prejudicial impact on pre-trial publicity, affected the truthfulness of witnesses, and generally impacted (negatively) a defendant's fair-trial rights.

2 paragraphs later, without even trying to tackle any of these 3 points:

Why, then, the ban?

Um, read your own story man.

techsupporter• 16 years ago

Perhaps having live streams of trial courts might not be the right idea(1), but if we can't videotape trial courts, I definitely think appeals courts should have A/V access. In large part, appeals courts are where the law is "decided," versus the outcome of a case impacting, usually, a single person. The actions, decisions, and debate found in appellate courts (including the Supreme Court of the U.S., as well as the highest courts in a given state) should be widely available. The Supreme Court's practice of not immediately releasing audio recordings of certain high-profile cases, but selectively releasing them in others, is troubling to me.

1 - Editorial: I think that all courts should have live A/V feeds automatically available, except in cases involving a minor or a victim of a sexually-related crime.

Who's Afraid of Cameras in the Courtroom

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