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As the O.J. Simpson murder trial winds down, many still wonder if televising the trial was a good idea. Putting it on television somehow converted it from a process of solemn deliberation into a media event. Or did it?
Let's start with the media. Memory provides a humble example of how trial coverage can expand. When I was managing editor of the local daily about 15 years ago, I had a cub reporter, a young woman fresh out of college. Let's call her Linda.
Linda had never covered a trial, and yet we would soon need her on the courthouse beat. I called the local prosecutor and asked if there was some relatively minor criminal case scheduled for jury trial in the near future. He suggested a case resulting from an auto accident on Trout Creek Pass.
Before it started, Linda talked to the prosecutor, the defense attorney and the judge. They explained what was likely to happen and what she should look for. They agreed to answer her questions, if they could do so in an ethical manner, after each day's proceedings.
Thus Linda could familiarize herself with the judicial process and some of its local practitioners, so that she could do her job better in the future. After each day of the trial, she wrote a story.
Her stories were fine, and since they were local news, I ran them in the paper. The case wasn't that big a deal, but it beat running press releases from politicians.
Keep in mind that this trial was selected because it was relatively routine. There was nothing especially newsworthy about it; the only reason we published anything about it was because Linda was getting in some practice so that she could handle the story when an important trial came along.
Nonetheless, other news outlets decided it was a story. Before the end of the week, the weekly in Buena Vista, the Pueblo Chieftain and the local radio station were all covering the trial in detail. For all I know, the Denver papers, Reuters and the TV networks would have appeared if the trial had continued another week or two.
The Salida Mountain Mail was, and remains, one of the smallest daily newspapers in the United States. If it could elevate a minor trial into news that other organizations felt compelled to cover, then think of the influence of national and international television coverage.
The general public is no more familiar with the judicial process than Linda was. Some things should be explained. But America is not a small town, and so the television audience cannot directly ask the lawyers or the judge why something happened.
Expert commentators must be brought in to make sense of portions of the proceedings. Why did the prosecution object to a defense witness? Why is the defense upset about allowing certain photos into evidence? All the grounds cited in court may be familiar territory to the attorneys and the judge, but they're arcane mysteries to most of us.
And so coverage expands. But is this public interest in court proceedings really something new and disturbing?
No. I decided that last week when I went to watch a local murder trial. As I write this, the case hasn't gone to the jury, and so I'll forebear specifics.
The old district courtroom, which was actually in the courthouse, was huge and majestic. The seats were comfortable. It was built in a day when trials attracted a considerable live audience.
Nowadays district court convenes in the Chaffee County Judicial Facility. The courtroom is small with only five rows of benches, which apparently came from the same shop as those church pews designed to keep you from falling asleep during the sermon.
The old courtroom conveyed a majestic dignity, as though solemn rituals were performed there; the new one is doubtless more efficient and practical.
Watching a murder trial in person is different than watching one on television. There are real people, not electronic images, in front of you. They sweat and they hem and haw and one of them could go to prison for a long time. It certainly holds your interest.
And so, I suggest that if you're concerned about TV coverage of trials, you take the trouble to go sit through one at your local courthouse -- no matter how uncomfortable the seats or small the room.
I think you'll discover, as I have recently, that a trial is fascinating, and that no matter how much your back or bottom aches, you can't wait for it to resume. That is why, before there was television, courtrooms were built to accommodate the crowds that might come to see an Abraham Lincoln or Clarence Darrow argue when the circuit court was in session.
The much-decried circus atmosphere
of the Simpson
trial, with much commentary and discussion among the
public, actually represents the continuation of an American
tradition of treating trials as public spectacles.
And there's nothing wrong with that. We ought to pay attention to what happens in courtrooms; that's why our constitution provides for public trials. Go be part of the courtroom public sometime, and see whether you still feel the same way about the Simpson coverage. I suspect you'll conclude that the real problem is not O.J. overkill, but that other trials deserve our attention, too.
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