Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/11/28

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Subject: RE: [Leica] Journalistic principles
From: Marc James Small <msmall@roanoke.infi.net>
Date: Sun, 28 Nov 1999 13:31:31 -0500

At 10:02 AM 11/28/1999 -0800, Eric Welch wrote:
>Did you not make the comment 
>that you were glad that certain jurisdictions don't allow cameras in the 
>courtroom? I find allowing reporters, and not photographers, to be highly 
>subjective, and in fact hypocritical.

Be that as it may, Eric.  I never said I did not want the press, as a
totality, in the Court-Room.  You stretched my words beyond their ken.  Or
are you so intolerantly arrogant that ONLY photographers now rate with you
as "the press"?

No, I do not want photographers in the court room.  A Leica with Viso,
perhaps, but none of these horrid Nikons or Canons with that whizes and
bangs and flashes and bleeps and the loud blaring klaxons which go off,
"THREE EXPOSURES LEFT!", "TWO EXPOSURES LEFT!", and so forth.

It is HARD to concentrate when you are a trial attorney;  it is even harder
to stay focused as a judge.  The distraction of cameras is just plain evil
and cheats our citizens of their first and fundamental right, that of a
fair trial, represented by counsel who can concentrate on the case before
them and not on the fact that some blithering moron has dropped 38 rolls of
Fuzzinon Film onto the floor.  Promise me COMPLETE silence and COMPLETE
lack of flash and COMPLETE lack of, "LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT!  I have a
deadline!" to a bailiff at a security station, as a casual attorney
acquintance recently encountered somewhere in the mid-west --- might have
been in St Louis -- and the judge went, "Tut, Tut.  Ten dollar fine for
making a disturbance.  First Amendment, dontcha know?"

Video camera outside the room is tolerable and unobtrusive.  A quiet
camera, discretely run, might be acceptable in the Court-Room.  Bozo and
the Clown and the Clicking Monstrosity is NOT acceptable, and thank heavens
I practice where such is not accepted.

(Now, I am a former print journalist, so, yes, I have a bias.)  Our print
journalists stay and listen, don't say anything.  After the trial, they ask
a couple of polite questions, understand "I have no comment" (in every
jurisdiction in the US, it is Bad Form, if not unethical, for an attorney
to comment on a trial in progress.  Tell that to the photogenic of the
lot!) and don't call you at four in the morning.  (I was at a seminar three
or four years back;  one of the fellows had practiced in the American west
somewhere, I forget where -- Yreka or whatever it is California, or
Portland, Oregon, or somesuch.  At any event, a photo-journalist CALLED him
at 2 AM at home and demanded he appear immediately for a photo-interview!)

Horror stories go on.  Keep the cameras out of the Court-Room.

As to Grisham, I have heard he has been a trial attorney.  Wow!  Glad I
don't practice in his jurisdiction, if that is the case!  His experience is
nothing, remotely, like mine.

Suaviter in modo, bro!

Marc

msmall@roanoke.infi.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!