Daily View: Should courts be televised?
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Commentators dissect proposals to allow television cameras in English and Welsh courts.
Sky News' associate editor why he is pressing for cameras in court:
"It was a proposal whose time had come - the controversy over sentencing following last month's riots demonstrated the public's confusion over judicial policy. If judges could be seen and heard as they passed sentences, we argued, people would surely better understand the rationale they had used to decide on a particular penalty."
The gives the proposal a thumbs up, saying the presence of cameras would go a long way to improving public confidence in the system:
"If the public saw prosecutors making the case and defence lawyers critiquing it, and then heard the judge summing up they would have much greater faith in what goes on in court.
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"Televising proceedings would also place a greater obligation on judges to deliver fair and consistent decisions. Disparities in sentencing have been a controversial feature of the aftermath of the riots that flared across England last month, with prison governors, lawyers, community leaders and human rights campaigners all raising questions about the severity and even-handedness of some of the punishments handed out. The presence of cameras in court would surely limit the scope for magistrates to go too far their own way in handing down sentences, whether light or heavy."
The there are far more useful things the judiciary can do to make court decisions transparent:
"If the judiciary want to achieve a more open and transparent justice system they need to provide much better information to reporters who attend courts where schedules constantly change. And they should press the Government to complete the reforms to open up the family courts, which are in limbo. The case for allowing TV cameras into the courts is not yet convincingly made. If proceedings are to be televised, it must be clear it serves both openness and justice."
Deputy President of the Supreme Court Lord Hope decided to allow filming in Scottish courts. that when TV cameras were present emotions could become exaggerated:
"There was an obvious attraction in giving prominence to a judge's remarks to deter others. But the occasion when a judge passes sentence is apt to arouse strong emotions on the part of victims and the accused, as well as their friends and families. There was a risk that they would be enhanced by the knowledge that proceedings were being televised, and that the judge's message would be overshadowed by broadcasting how those emotions were expressed. There was a risk, too, that the context of the judge's remarks would not be fully understood by those who had not observed the trial's proceedings."
Media law consultant that cameras in court may lead to a bias view:
"What of the many not guilty verdicts delivered every day by courts up and down the land? If sentences are televised, but not guilty verdicts, directed acquittals, dismissal of charges and discontinued cases are not given similar TV coverage, surely this also produces a skewed view of the judicial process?"
that media interest in court dramas will quickly wane:
"This being Britain and the attention span for detail (and *fact*) being limited for most of us in busy 21st century online overload lives, I suspect that it will be a short lived wonder. The TV companies and tabloids will want corrupt MP's, 'paedos' and the flotsam and jetsam of a Hogarthian nightmare on trial."
