Word: broadcast
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...wake of the Smith rape trial in Florida, the role of the mass media in American courtrooms must be reexamined. Is it a good thing that a woman who claimed that she was raped had her blacked out face broadcast by every media outlet from CNN to Saturday Night Live? If not, is it a necessary evil, the only alternative to which is government censorship...
THERE ARE TWO POSSIBLE ways to argue for intensive broadcast media coverage of trials, rape or otherwise. One is consequentialist: claiming that courts work better when they know they are being watched. The other is categorical: invoking a public right to know or a right to untrammeled free press. As applied to events such as the Smith rape trial, neither of these arguments makes sense...
Free press means that no government censor blacks out what the papers print or the networks broadcast. It does not mean that journalists have carte blanche to impose themselves and their equipment wherever they choose. No one has the right to install a camera in your bathroom for example...
...courtrooms are public places. So is the Oval Office, and George Bush need not admit Sam Donaldson whenever Sam wants an interview. Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School is a public place, and free press doesn't mean that Channel 5 can demand to broadcast geometry classes. News crews could claim, plausibly, that unwatched teachers gets away with sloppy teaching and that public interest requires press coverage. No government official will censor a story about poor math instruction in Massachusetts high schools. But nobody expects 15-year olds to concentrate on trapezoids while the cameras roll. And free press does...
MAYBE WILLIAM KENNEDY Smith was guilty of rape. And maybe he wasn't. The jury though not. Suspect what we may, one way or another, we can't know for sure. But now everyone in America knows that accusing a big name of rape invites a live broadcast carnival. If you are raped by someone prominent and have the courage to press charges, you will not only go through the standard stress of deposition, cross-examination and other unpleasantries required by the legitimate right of the accused, but you will do it under the lights and in millions of kitchens...