Last week, a number of Congressional Democrats wrote a letter requesting that the Judicial Conference of the United States make an exception from its longstanding policy of not televising federal criminal trials. The reason for the exception: the defendant is one Donald Trump, and Americans have a right to see the criminal proceedings against him in their full glory.
I spoke to several media outlets (including the Washington Post and NPR) about the prospect of a televised trial. A few additional thoughts follow.
The Democrats’ letter is clearly a political ploy. The signatories hope and expect that the proceedings will be highly damaging to Mr. Trump, and will all but end the viability of his 2024 presidential campaign. But even if the motivation is cynically political, it is not plainly wrong. Studies have repeatedly shown that when members of the public are exposed to courtroom proceedings, they tend to see the courts as more fair and tend to accept the legal outcomes even when they disagree with those outcomes.
The danger of broadcasting the trials is twofold. First, the presence of cameras in the courtroom can distort the behavior of participants. Witnesses and jurors may be intimidated if they believe their identities will be broadcast widely, especially in an age of easy doxxing. On the other hand, some lawyers and witnesses may grandstand for the cameras, creating a circus-like atmosphere. Either reaction could tarnish the integrity of the trial. Second, the media might present small video snippets out of context, distorting what actgually happened in court. This would hurt public perceptions of justice, and may even incite extremists to act.
I think that the best approach is a court-controlled livestream of the entire proceeding, which would be broadcast on the uscourts.gov website and/or a dedicated YouTube channel. The public could watch the proceedings but the media would be restricted from fanning the flames of All Things Trump with ESPN-style video highlights of the trial.
And if no cameras are permitted (which seems the likely outcome), the Republic will not fall. In Massachusetts alone, federal courts have handled many high-profile criminal trials over the past twenty years, including those of Richard Reid (the shoe bomber), Whitey Bulger, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and the Varsity Blues defendants. None were televised and yet justice was done to the public’s satisfaction.
The Interdependent Third Branch 