COVERING THE COURTS: FREE PRESS, FAIR TRIALS AND JOURNALISTIC PERFORMANCE by Robert Giles and
Robert W. Snyder (Editors). Transaction Publishers: New Brunswick (USA) and London (UK), 1999. 146 pp.
Reviewed by Mitch Land, Director, Mayborn Graduate Institute of Journalism, Department of Journalism, University of North Texas.
COVERING THE COURTS is more than a practical handbook for members of the media and the judicial system. Giles and Snyder bring together an impressive list of contributors from media practice and the legal and judicial professions to address three themes: First, the essays remind us that print and broadcast journalists serve as the intermediaries between most citizens and the events that take place in the judicial process -- from the arrest of the accused to the adjudication of the case. In short, the public --for better or worse-- is represented by the media’s presence in the process. Second, judges and media practitioners alike agree that all parties involved in the process use the media to their best advantage. And third, the essays move toward a consensus that argues cogently for admitting cameras in federal courts and in the Supreme Court.
The book’s publication in 1998 and republication in 1999 are timely because as the decade drew to a close, it produced two of the most sensational American trials of the 20th Century --those of O. J. Simpson and Timothy McVeigh. The former trial, whose cameras provided world viewers with the longest running live soap opera in television’s history, impacted the second trial by its absence of public-access cameras. Readers will be pleased to hear from two members of the Simpson defense team. Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. and Barry Scheck give their views on cameras in the courtroom and the media’s conduct and responsibility vis-a-vis the American judicial system. With the Simpson and McVeigh trials as backdrop, the book’s 18 chapters of essays and occasional interviews discuss the persistent tension between free press and fair trial. The essays provide readers with a historical review of this tension by means of both precedent-setting High Court cases and lesser-known trials. As the essays conclude with an update on the current relationship between free press and fair trail in this country, one of the essayists launches a parting salvo at the mystique of the Supreme Court, arguing for greater public access to this highest judicial arena.
The contributors chart a concise and direct course for the reader through the complex American judicial labyrinth to underscore the importance of public access from pretrial hearings through jury-trial proceedings to the appellate stages. At the same time, the essayists challenge the press to seek a higher level of responsible reporting in the interest of fair trials.
Still, the book suffers from a light case of myopia, especially in its first theme, which equates the media with the Fourth Estate. A couple of essays address only cursorily the inevitable shortcomings of America’s market-driven media. These shortcomings, however, may explain the court’s reluctance to allow greater openness to press coverage. Simply put, the essays fail to hit squarely at the center of the target: market-driven media that pander to the entertainment desires of their readers and viewers. As long as ratings and circulation figures, which correlate with advertising rates, drive media content, the coverage of trials will always take the shape of ratings demands and circulation needs. The only exception to this reality may be CSPAN and National Public Radio. It is naive to assume, as apparently do the editors, that commercial media sources, even the elite press, represent some austere Fourth Estate; the assumption ignores the primary purpose of market-driven media --to deliver consumers to advertisers for a profit, not to inform the electorate in the interests of a more democratic society. Commercial media are the eyes and ears of American consumers, not American citizens. There is a vast difference. This book does not address this difference sufficiently.
The book takes better aim at the shy American judicial system. For example, Randall Kennedy’s sober assessment of the U. S. Supreme Court serves as a resounding
call for greater scrutiny of this secluded judicial club. Cameras are needed more than ever in the highest court of the land as it continues to make law through its interpretation of the U. S. Constitution. Taken together, the essays seem to suggest that disinterested cameras in the courtrooms --from the state courts through the federal courts to the Supreme Court-- would mitigate against the sensationalism that bedevils America’s market-driven media. The presence of CSPAN-style cameras would likely become ordinary and thus defuse their mystique and misuse. Such a visual presence would indeed allow the American public to attend trials without compromising their fairness.
To its credit, the book argues persuasively that both realities --free press and fair trial-- depend upon each
other. A robust democracy must consist of both a judicial system in which defendants are tried fairly and a free
press, which assures public confidence in its system of justice because public access to trials ensures that they
will be fair.