Court Cameras Should Focus on Rules

Gov. Pete Wilson thinks the time has come to remove television cameras from the courtroom. So does Don Hewitt, the executive producer of “60 Minutes,” as well as scores of judges who have been closing their courtrooms to TV cameras because of the backlash over the coverage of the O.J. Simpson double murder trial (“State Task Force Urges Curbs on Camera Use in Courtroom,” Part A, Feb. 23).

The State Judicial Council has ordered a special task force to review current regulations permitting television and still photographers in the courtroom. And there is considerable apprehension among broadcast journalists in California that they are about to lose one of their most cherished privileges.

In 1980, Chief Justice Rose Bird impaneled another task force to see if broadcasters should be permitted to photograph courtroom proceedings. Among those named to the panel from the Los Angeles area were cartoonist Paul Conrad of The Times, former Channel 2 anchorman Joseph Benti, the late Wayne Satz of KABC and myself. At the time, I was executive editor of KNBC News, but my previous employment as a newspaperman and wire service reporter made me apprehensive about cameras in the courtroom. Before cameras were banned in the 1950s, I recalled several incidents in which courtroom decorum vanished in the presence of a camera.

From the start, defense attorneys on the task force, led by Ephraim Margolin of San Francisco, were nearly unanimous in their opposition to cameras in court. But then, after a demonstration with a video camera at a conference room at Los Angeles International Airport, the hitherto dissenting faction became willing to accept a limited form of coverage. The task force, known as “The Committee on the Media and the Courts,” seemed to be won over after cameraman Dick Smith of KNBC was able to film the assembled members without benefit of lights. And the fact that the video camera was rolling and did not make the whirring sound of a film camera was another big selling point. In fact, most members of the task force were unaware they were being photographed until the video tape was played back for them.

Eventually, a compromise for court coverage was hammered out. A one-year experiment would give judges sole discretion over the feasibility of filming a trial. Jurors were never to bephotographed, not even during the juror selection process. One video camera operator and one still photographer could be stationed at the rear of the courtroom. Following this rule at the Simpson trial would have negated those voyeuristic camera movements which frequently swept across the courtroom to get reaction from the Brown and Goldman families, as well as the defendant himself. Most of us on the task force agreed this wouldn’t be “good television” but it was as far as we were willing to go. We saw no conflict in protecting our 1st Amendment rights with this requirement.

There were a number of other rules. Lights were banned from camera equipment. And still photographers were required to use cameras that made little or no clicking sounds. News organizations were required to select the person who would operate the pool camera. And a written request for camera coverage would have to be submitted in advance to the court. We decided it be mandatory that a news organization be present if it were to receive the pictures provided by pool coverage. In other words, show up with a your own personnel and your own camera regardless of which organization provides pool coverage.

In late January 1981, the Judicial Council gave the OK for a one-year courtroom experiment. The big moment came on Feb. 4, 1981, when KNBC was granted permission by the late Superior Judge Thomas W. Fredericks to cover the Torrance murder trial of accused mass killer Lawrence S. Bittaker, who is now on San Quentin’s death row. The coverage came off without a hitch. The camera caught Bittaker in a close-up as he testified in his own defense, but most of the time all we saw of the prosecutor and defense attorney was the backs of their heads. It was a breakthrough in the long battle to cover the courts, and no one thought for a moment that the television coverage was flawed.

So what happened? In 1984, the Judicial Council ruled the experiment had succeeded and that cameras could be allowed in the courtroom at the judge’s discretion. But gradually media organizations started flaunting the rules. Instead of stationing themselves at the rear of the courtroom, camera operators frequently crept closer to the bench so they could get a more panoramic view of the proceedings. At one hearing, a judge invited me to move our camera into an empty jury box so we could get “better shots.” And it wasn’t unusual to see jurors’ faces showing up in the court coverage. Oftentimes, judges allowed more than one video camera in the courtroom.

And finally, news organizations began ignoring the rule that a station or newspaper representative be present to reap the fruits of the pool camera’s labor. Many times television engineers simply patched into a phone company feed of the court proceedings, thus saving themselves considerable labor costs.

The end result was the O.J. Simpson trial with all the cinema verite orchestrated by Court TV, which supplied the pool camera. It was something we on the original task force could never have imagined. And I am certain we would never have voted to allow cameras in court had we been able to envision the Simpson trial.

So what’s the solution? Speaking for myself, I believe we should give court coverage a one-year extension to see if news organizations can learn to live by the rules we formulated in 1980. Otherwise, common sense requires we go back to the “dark ages” of television.