Cameras in the Courtroom?

    I was all for cameras in the courtroom. Openness, sunshine, let the people see and know what's going on. All that.
   Now that these trials become the main source of entertainment on our news stations, now that they dominate the coverage to the detriment of coverage of other topics, I'm having second thoughts. It's cheap to broadcast, it draws ratings, and for that, it's too tempting for news outfits to spend far too much time on them. We've turned murder trials into circuses for profit, fame and distraction. It's become a jobs program for lawyers, judges, and defendants to get famous.
   I think it's time to rethink it. We can be informed without having to have a front seat. Maybe we could dedicate all of it to one cable channel, like C-SPAN for trials, but the temptation is too strong to monetize it. I'm not convinced that either justice or an informed public is served. I think it's the opposite.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I disagree. The Zimmerman trial, for instance, was a cause celbre way before the trial. At least with it being public, the public is being informed as to how the verdict was decided. I think the best part of trials being so public, is now we know how jurors are selected...which as we hve been seeing are usually the most uninformed, incurious, don't care about the world, bunch of people that exist.
July 19, 2013 at 4:34 PM
Unknown said…
I tend to be of two minds on this. One, as I mentioned before, I think we could have a cable station like C-SPAN dedicated to trials.
The other is that this isn't about informing people so much as a revenue center for "news" organizations that use it as cover and distraction to keep us from noticing they aren't really covering or investigating other, more important, stories because they're difficult, expensive, or go against the grain, or are damaging to the bottom line, of their corporate heads.
July 19, 2013 at 6:19 PM
Unknown said…
That being said, this particular case has so many other issues intertwined with it. The "guilty or innocent" result of the show and trial itself is less consequential than the surrounding issues of gun rights, racism, Constitutional questions, police malfeasance, press bias, and what the fuck is wrong with Florida, among others.
July 19, 2013 at 6:24 PM
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