TV Coverage of Trials

Proceedings in court should be conducted with fitting dignity and decorum. The taking of photographs in the courtroom, during sessions of the court or recesses between sessions, and the broadcasting of court proceedings are calculated to detract from the essential dignity of the proceedings, degrade the court and create misconceptions with respect thereto in the mind of the public and should not be permitted (Overbeck and Pullen, 1985).

Subsequent to the development of television, Canon 35 was amended in 1952 to include that medium, and in the early 1970s, when the old Canons were replaced with the ABA Code of Judicial Conduct, a new Rule, 3A(7), permitted limited television coverage of certain trials "with the consent of all parties, and only then for use in educational institutions after all direct appeals were exhausted (which could be years later)" (Neiman, 1981; Overbe

. . .
ary consents could not be obtained. The court took an unprecedented step on April 7, 1977, and unanimously decided that all state courts would be open to unrestricted camera access without the prior consent of lawyers or judges, and subsequently established the experiment period would run from July 5, 1977 to June 30, 1978. During the test period, more than 2,750 judges, lawyers, court personnel, witnesses, and jurors, were involved in trials which were televised, and two of them were the Chandler defendants (White, 1980). In April 1979, the Florida Supreme Court unanimously decided to amend the state's Canon 3A(7). The Canon was amended to give judges ultimate discretion over the use of cameras in their courtrooms. In the event the presence of cameras became a problem, the judge could summarily order them removed (White, 1980). It was the court's determination that the one-year study had revealed, among other things, that the presence of electronic media had little effect on perceptions of the judiciary or the dignity of the proceedings, the presence of electronic media disrupted proceedings only slightly or not at all, there was no effect upon judges' or jurors' ability to judge the truthfulness of witnesses, and the
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Approximate Word count = 3679
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page)

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