PERSPECTIVES ON COURTROOM TELEVISION : Cameras Ensure Public Confidence : One disputed report isn’t worth the risk of cutting all direct access to a trial as controversial as Simpson’s.

Superior Court Judge Lance A. Ito has guided the O. J. Simpson murder trial into jury selection under a cloud with profound implications for freedom of the press and the public’s right of access to its justice system.

On Friday, Ito again castigated alleged inaccurate reporting by television station KNBC, about a story linking a sock found in O. J. Simpson’s bedroom to the slain Nicole Brown Simpson. Ito and others have called the story grossly inaccurate.

The story may or may not be accurate; it may not be the most responsible report ever broadcast in Los Angeles. However, its accuracy--or the judgment involved in broadcasting it--is not the real question here.

Ito has served notice that he intends to hold a hearing this week on terminating all electronic media coverage of the trial. Not only is this proposed punishment unrelated to the media’s alleged violation, but it poses serious legal and practical problems.

Ito has a legitimate--indeed, critical--interest in seeing that Simpson receives a fair trial. But the judge knew that when, on Aug. 2, he entered an order specifically allowing television cameras in his courtroom and setting ground rules for broadcasters to place cameras elsewhere in the Criminal Courts Building.

Absolutely nothing has happened in the past two months to indicate that those initial findings--that electronic coverage would not impair Simpson’s fair trial rights--were wrong. Indeed, over the past weekend, even members of Simpson’s defense team publicly opposed ending electronic courtroom coverage.

From the perspective of public policy as well, such a decision would make no sense. First, pulling the plug would not address Ito’s complaint with KNBC, which based its story not on events in the courtroom but on information obtained from confidential sources outside. It is illogical to impose in-court punitive measures when out-of-court practices have enraged the judge.

In the media world of the late 20th Century, television cameras are no different from the pencils and note pads of newspaper reporters. Television is a unique medium, effective because it brings to its audience the faces, inflections and words of its sources. To deny television camera access to the trial is to bar the public from witnessing the proceedings--in a system of justice that the people pay for and in which the people must have confidence.

If anything, the frequency of stories like KNBC’s disputed report will only increase under the action contemplated by Ito. The reality is that in-court proceedings become the news story on days when court is in session; they also act as a check on the mainstream media’s need or desire to conduct independent investigations.

The ultimate irony of Ito’s position is that the very existence of electronic media coverage of the Simpson trial serves to limit or eliminate any damage that otherwise prejudicial information might cause. His nationally televised condemnations of KNBC’s story have more than fully mitigated whatever damage may have been done by the original report.

As a practical matter, limiting television coverage from the courtroom would work a hardship on all news media, since most reporters covering the trial rely on the live television feed as a practical alternative to crowding into a courtroom far too small to accommodate them. Reports prepared by those excluded from the courtroom would inevitably be less reliable and accurate.

The importance of assuring the public that the Simpson trial is fair and open to public scrutiny is paramount. Nothing will guarantee that outcome with greater certainty than continuing to afford the nation an electronic eye and ear into Ito’s courtroom.