As I recently noted, the opponents of California’s Proposition 8 tried to turn it into a show trial by allowing it to be shown on YouTube. Well, the U.S. Supreme Court says nope:
Two hours before the trial was scheduled to start, the Supreme Court blocked video of the proceedings from being posted on YouTube.com. It said justices need more time to review that issue and put the order in place at least until Wednesday.
This will send many opponents of Prop 8 around the bend, but most of these same people have been silent on the C-SPAN ban from congressional health reform negotiations.
But one can’t have it both ways. If you want to be taken seriously, you can’t demand transparency for the Prop 8 trial and condone opacity in Congress. It just won’t do.
UPDATE:
It’s important, by the way, not to get the transparency question mixed up with the constitutional question raised by Proposition 8. The opponents of Prop 8 are indeed being hypocritical when they demand YouTube for that trial yet condone the C-SPAN ban.
But Prop 8’s constitutionality is a trickier question. I’m not at all comfortable with overturning the will of the people as expressed in a referendum. On the other hand, Ted Olsen is a man of genuine integrity and wouldn’t be involved in the opposition if there weren’t serious questions to consider.
Comments 4
“If you want to be taken seriously, you can’t demand transparency for the Prop 8 trial and condone opacity in Congress. It just won’t do.”
Why not? It’s hardly obvious that one must either support video cameras everywhere or video cameras nowhere.
If I think C-SPAN ought to be able to televise the proceedings on the floor of the Senate, how does it then automatically follow that I’m required to support cameras in conference negotiations? Does “consistency” further require that I clamor for cameras in the cloakroom, the washrooms, the leadership offices, and any other place where Senators might conceivably interact with one another?
Would letting cameras in the courtroom require cameras in the jury room? The judge’s chambers? And since we can’t have cameras in any of those places at present, should they be forbidden on the courthouse steps as well?
Here’s consistency for you: Suppose we let people bring video cameras to any proceeding that’s open to the public? What’s so crazy about that? That’d result in exactly the situation that you airily dismiss with “It just won’t do,” as if clucking and shaking one’s head was a devastating argument.
Posted 11 Jan 2010 at 8:49 pm ¶It’s hardly obvious that one must either support video cameras everywhere or video cameras nowhere.
Nice straw man you’ve got there. Hate to see anything happen to it. Oops, I see you’ve already knocked it down.
How about we stick to the point: C-SPAN would add value to the health reform negotiations, by keeping the Dems (relatively) honest. In a courtroom, however, evidence should rule. YouTube would not add evidence. It would merely “OJ-ize” the trial and intimidate proponents of Prop 8.
A transparency purist might be willing to put up with YouTube in the courtroom as long as C-SPAN is allowed to video the reform negotiations. But to take the opposite position is just perverse. There is simply no way to reconcile that stance with a concern for transparency or fairness.
Posted 11 Jan 2010 at 9:39 pm ¶“How about we stick to the point: C-SPAN would add value to the health reform negotiations, by keeping the Dems (relatively) honest.”
The bit about cameras in the conference negotiations doesn’t strike me as the result of an honest desire for transparency. It seems, rather, like obstructionism in a funny hat. These negotiations will be difficult, and involve some political horse-trading, and it’ll be more difficult to come to a workable compromise if everyone’s preening for the cameras.
That people who favor HCR are generally opposed to cameras in the conference negotiations and people who oppose HCR are generally in favor says to me that everyone understands pretty clearly that the cameras would throw sand in the gears.
As for the Prop 8 trial, I’m honestly baffled. Cameras in the courtroom would be a new thing, to be sure, but how is it that everyone’s so certain that it cuts in favor of the anti-prop 8 forces? To hear the prop-8 proponents tell it, prop 8 was a wildly popular initiative, and the pro-marriage-equality forces are a tiny but vocal minority, out of touch with the population as a whole.
How come they’re so sure, then, that a little sunlight in the courtroom will hurt their side? If one accepts their narrative as genuine, shouldn’t one believe that cameras in that courtroom should help rally the public to their side?
How come only one side in this prop 8 fight is afraid of cameras in the courtroom?
Posted 12 Jan 2010 at 1:21 am ¶It is amazingly silly to equate cameras at a civil trial with cameras in a bill negotiation session. For one, we have close to twenty years experience televising state court trials. We know from academic study what does and does not happen when cameras are in the courtroom. For every “OJ” trial there are hundreds if not thousands of other cases where cameras have no impact whatsoever . . . except for recording what happened in the people’s courtroom. So it is not a huge leap to have a delayed video and audio recording of the trial, especially when the Supreme Court does tape delayed audio taping of its sessions.
But since when have bill conference sessions been recorded? Never, to my knowledge. I don’t even know of any state that records such sessions. So unlike broadcasting a trial, there is no 20 year long trail of history showing the impact of taping and showing those negotiations. And if I am wrong, please show me how.
Another thing: if taping is such a swell idea, then why was there no clamor from the right to have taping when the GOPers held sway over Congress?
Posted 12 Jan 2010 at 7:58 am ¶Post a Comment