Cameras In Courtrooms Serve Important Function One Circuslike Trial Is No Reason, In This TV Newsman’s View, To Take Away Americans’ Front-Row Seat To Their Legal System.

It’s never been easy defending all of the animals in the news media circus, because it’s such an awfully big tent.

The lions and tigers are there, seeking truth and justice. The vast majority of animals in the middle are not perfect but generally try hard to be fair. And somewhere down below, the hyenas and jackasses pile for the scraps with little regard for ethics or responsibility, fed by the public’s appetite for scandal and cheap outrage.

The O.J. Simpson trial was one of those rare stories where ALL of the animals were feeding from the same trough. Now I fear that a vital window into government is taking too much heat: the courtroom television camera.

In almost every televised case prior to Simpson, images from the courtroom camera looked a lot more like C-SPAN than Entertainment Tonight. Surveys of judges around the country have consistently shown that juries and attorneys are not distracted by the presence of a single camera in the back corner, and that the fairness is not otherwise affected.

When I first began covering criminal trials with a camera 11 years ago, I was almost paranoid with the fear that it might distract jurors and affect the defendant’s right to a fair trial. I still watch out for it, but time and again, I’ve watched jurors completely ignore us.

The courtrooms in this country are meant to be open for public inspection. Citizen apathy is a growing and serious issue for our government. Technology means involvement.

But already, in the wake of Simpson, cameras have been excluded from three high-profile cases in other parts of the country, ignoring the experience of hundreds and hundreds of successfully televised trials stretching back more than a decade. A higher profile case means more people watching. More are learning about vital legal concepts like the burden of proof, hearsay, and admission of evidence.

To me, threats to pull courtroom cameras are a modern “kill the messenger” theory, a shotgun attempt to cure legitimate beefs over the antics of attorneys and the length of the Simpson trial itself. But attacking the camera is only an indirect way to address those frustrations, and does great damage to the camera’s chief virtue: bringing the justice system to the people who pay for it.

MEMO: Your Turn is a feature of the Wednesday and Saturday Opinion page. To submit a column for consideration, call Rebecca Nappi/459-5496, or Doug Floyd/459-5466.