Grania Langdon-Down asks whether the US dream of gavel to gavel courtroom television has turned sour


While the English courts are taking their first hesitant steps towards the possibility of televising appeals, cameras have been used in US courts as far back as the 1930s.



However, in those early years, chaotic scenes of courtrooms full of wires, lights, microphones and camera crews led to a virtual ban on in-court audio-visual coverage. But as technology advanced, so more states began allowing the televising of trials until today when all 50 states allow cameras in the appellate courts and 38 allow them in both criminal and civil trials.


But there are signs of a backlash starting, with some states moving away from ‘gavel-to-gavel’ coverage and limiting it to opening statements and sentencing – a trend described by critics as ‘Justice Lite’.



According to Doug Jacobs, general counsel for Court TV – the well-known US cable channel that has televised more than 800 cases over the past 12 years – it is happening primarily in Texas and California.



‘One of the reasons is that judges feel certain cases are already too high profile. However, the so-called media circuses surrounding some cases happen outside the courtroom. We are afraid it might signal a move away from gavel-to-gavel filming but I don’t think you can say with any certainty that is the way it is going to go.’



Certainly, cameras in court still raise the same concerns as here. However, he says: ‘We have been covering trials for 12 years now and never once has there been an appeal based on our coverage. And that’s just us. There have been thousands of cases covered by other broadcasters on a local level. Yet the last time a verdict was overturned due to camera coverage was in the 1960s. But the difference then was the camera wires snaked all over the courtroom, there were lights everywhere. Now there is just one small camera which can be operated remotely.’



Court TV, owned jointly by AOL Time Warner and Liberty Media Corporation, has a group of ‘trial trackers’ who monitor courts around the nation for interesting or important cases. In most states, the judge decides whether or not to allow the cameras in after listening to the opinions of the parties involved, although in some states, the parties have a virtual veto. If the judge refuses permission, Court TV never appeals.



Jacobs: looking for unique trialsMr Jacobs says the criteria for choosing a trial is that it has ‘something unique about it’. He adds: ‘The public may not learn anything but because the participants are in the public eye, we feel the public has a right to see it. Sometimes the people involved are unknown but the trial is interesting because of some other reason, such as the facts or an important legal issue. As with any news story, the editors make a decision about what is newsworthy, what is in the public interest and what the public will be interested in.


‘We felt the case of the British nanny Louise Woodward, for example, was interesting to cover because child abuse by carers is a subject much discussed here and she was English. Several English broadcasters showed it live. But the case attracted a lot of attention regardless of our cameras being there.’



He dismisses concerns that cameras encourage jurors to seek publicity or that lawyers get chosen for their looks rather than their legal knowledge. ‘Many court guidelines don’t allow us to cover jurors and the truth is, even when we are allowed to, we usually don’t. Broadcasters try to interview jurors after big cases but that happens whether we are there or not.



‘It is irrelevant to us what the lawyers look like. They are already on the case when we apply to cover it. I also don’t think it encourages them to grandstand. I tried a case on Court TV when I was a litigator for CBS. They set the camera up in the jury box when I was opening the case... I just ignored it. The camera wasn’t my audience – the jury was.’



But what about the criticism that televising trials is more about entertaining than educating the public? Mr Jacobs argues: ‘A former US Supreme Court Justice said that "sunshine is the best disinfectant". We think of the cameras as a window into the courtroom, shining a light on the process.



‘The most famous example of this is the trial in 2000 of four New York policemen accused of shooting dead an unarmed man in the Bronx. The trial was moved to Albany, 200 miles away, so nobody from the local community was able to get there. We applied to cover the trial as New York has a statute prohibiting cameras. The judge declared the statute unconstitutional and allowed cameras in. When the four were acquitted, there was no unrest or violence and Mayor Guiliani said at the time that he believed the public had a better understanding of the reason why the jury had reached that verdict because of the coverage.



‘On the other hand, cameras were only allowed in an early hearing of the case against Kobe Bryant, the basketball star charged with sexual assault. However, if the preliminary issues had been covered, people might have had a better understanding why the charges were dropped.’



Mr Jacobs welcomes the camera experiment in England. ‘If it goes ahead and we could get the signal, we would be delighted to show interesting cases,’ he says.





‘I think it would be fascinating for Americans to see what their UK cousins do in their courts.’