Judging the Impact of Camera Ban

It took a non-journalist to comprehend the real harm behind the judges’ decision to erect a barrier to the use of cameras and tape recorders in Los Angeles County courthouses.

Under a rule approved by a majority of the county’s judges this week, the use of cameras and recorders would be banned except in one downtown courthouse pressroom and areas “approved by the presiding judge or district supervising judge.”

If journalists want to shoot pictures or record interviews in a courthouse hallway, they must submit a written request to a judge five days before the planned coverage “unless good cause is shown” for speedier permission. Reporters must specify the anticipated time of interview, the judicial order states, and “time estimates will be enforced.”

That means the public hallways are off-limits for cameras and tape recorders. If witnesses or anyone else involved in a trial wants to speak to the public through radio or television, they have to go outside the courthouse. Newspaper and magazine photographers are subject to the same ban.

The restrictions, partially prompted by the O.J. Simpson media circus, have enraged the journalistic community. But the harm extends much further than that, as was pointed out to me in a letter from Karlene A. George, president of the Los Angeles County Superior Court Clerks Assn.

*

George was in the news recently as a leader of her union’s successful eight-day strike against the courts, resulting in the clerks’ first raise since 1991.

Noting how I had said in a previous column that the judges were reacting to the Simpson media circus, George wrote:

“I agree with your statements regarding the effect of the Simpson trial upon the judges. They are, quite simply, afraid of the press. And rather than opening their doors to the public through you--a move which would assist in dissolving much of the mystery surrounding our court system--they have instead chosen to do just the opposite by attempting to exclude you with these new rules.

“It is this exclusion of the press, and, ultimately, of the public, that I would like to address.

“In early 1992, the state attorney general issued an opinion that, when making administrative decisions regarding the court’s budget, the judges were not subject to either the Brown or the Bagley Keen Acts [which require public agencies to transact their business in public].

“The result of this is that even though, since January 1989 the judges have had complete administrative control of the courts in this county, they have acted privately, with no public hearings and no input from the taxpayers, [who are] their source of funding for an annual Superior Court budget of nearly $300 million.

“The judges make all their administrative decisions in complete secrecy just as they . . . vote upon the proposed media rules, with no public testimony from you, any other members of the press or any taxpaying citizen.

“Is this right?” she asked. “We don’t think so.”

She’s right. The doors close tight when the judges’ Personnel and Budget and Executive committees meet to decide how to spend the sizable sums allocated to the Los Angeles courts by state government.

We don’t know how much they intend to spend on computers, including home PCs. We have no idea of the sums allocated for entertainment or trips to judicial conferences in faraway places.

Could they cut down on frills and spend more on courtroom security? We don’t know. In fact, the county supervisors tried to find the answer to this question when the judges asked for more money for security. None of your business, the judges replied, raising the banner of judicial independence.

They gave the same answer to the Legislature when state legislators, strapped for funds a few years ago, asked the courts to share the budget cutting imposed on other parts of county governments.

*

I showed George’s letter to Judge Robert O’Brien, who is chairman of the judges’ Rules Committee and an influential jurist in deciding court policy.

“I sit in on all those meetings,” he said. “I don’t see why they can’t be open.” Most of the judges, however, don’t agree with him.

But while supporting open budget meetings, Judge O’Brien is also a forceful defender of the new rules restricting the press.

He made that clear Tuesday night at a Society of Professional Journalists panel on the rules. “We have noticed in the past two years there has developed a kind of turmoil in these high-profile cases,” he said. “Judges are the keepers of these buildings. They have the duty to keep decorum.”

Judge O’Brien showed a lot of class in defending the rules before a hostile audience. But he’s wrong about the judges’ role.

Judges are not the keepers of these buildings, they are temporary occupants of courthouses that are built and maintained with our money and should be open to the public and the press.