Judge Bans T-U Live Blogging - Stephen Dare Next?

[stjr]

Judge shuts down Jacksonville.com blog; Times-Union to appeal

   * By Steve Patterson
   * Story updated at 11:18 AM on Friday, Jan. 15, 2010

A judge’s order shut down Jacksonville.com’s blog coverage of a murder trial Thursday and set the stage for a legal contest over the role of new media in courtrooms.

A Times-Union reporter and two television reporters were told to stop using electronic gear to cover the trials of three men charged with the 2006 Jacksonville shooting death of 8-year-old DreShawna Davis.

The Times-Union will appeal, Editor Frank Denton said.

Circuit Judge L. Page Haddock said the electronic devices were a distraction to jurors. He said his decision was based on a 31-year-old Supreme Court order that set rules for having television cameras in hearings.

He said that order, written before the Internet existed, didn’t mention laptops communicating with the outside world.

Times-Union reporter Bridget Murphy blogged during opening arguments Wednesday in the trials of Rasheem, Tajuane and Terrell Dubose. That coverage continued Thursday.

But shortly after 2 p.m., Haddock stopped to tell Murphy and others to shut down.

Later, the judge told Times-Union attorney George Gabel, “ ‘They’re distracting the jurors; they’re distracting me.’ ”

Since Wednesday, 1,309 people had followed Murphy’s coverage. State Attorney Angela Corey told The Times-Union she had followed opening arguments that way and said the live blog was “awesome.”

Earlier, Murphy said, the judge banned a spectator after the man’s cell phone rang.
A single, shared video camera has covered the high-profile trial for all news outlets, a system that the 1979 ruling envisioned.

Murphy said she was seated in the second-to-last bench in the courtroom, and talked to bailiffs about working from there before the trial started. A WJXT TV-4 reporter who was texting and an Action News reporter monitoring sound input from the pool camera were near the front of the courtroom and were also covered by the judge’s order, she said.

Banning new technologies because they weren’t mentioned in an old order invites a higher court to jump into the question, said Jennifer Granick, civil liberties director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco.

“It has frozen the medium for speech at the time that the state or the court rule was written,” Granick said. “The courts have recognized that the Internet is an engine for free speech … and yet there’s this reluctance to allow freedom to use those new digital technologies.”

A second Times-Union reporter who was writing notes on paper for stories in the newspaper and online was not affected.

Jacksonville.com was allowed to blog from a laptop during the trial of Tyrone Hartsfield last year in the shooting of Jacksonville Jaguar Richard Collier.

Denton said courts must allow new media to operate.

“While we also have a reporter in the courtroom, our blogger is the public’s only source of real-time coverage with commentary and explanation,” Denton said.

“This new medium allows the public to watch the trial in progress, hear our journalist’s explanation and ask questions. It benefits the judicial process, the openness of the trial and, especially, the public.”

http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2010-01-14/story/judge_shuts_down_jacksonvillecom_blog_times_union_to_appeal

[Dan B]

First Coast News is carrying the entire trial, wire to wire, on 25.2, and streaming it live via the web, as is Ch 4.

Why not live blog from the live TV feed?

[heights unknown]

United States of Russia, or is it China, or is it.......?

"HU"

[sheclown]

Sheclown, see existing thread and article on this at: http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php/topic,7267.0.html

ooops

[Dan B]

United States of Russia, or is it China, or is it.......?

"HU"

The only reason I am inclined to disagree with you, is because no other media was removed, including the other TU reporter. And while I can see the value of color commendation (seriously, I do), if their activity was being a distraction to the rest of the room, the judge was within his right to remove them.

[strider]

I'm sure the cameras were often considered a distraction when first allowed and so methods were devised to make them less distracting and perhaps the people involved also met the camera issue halfway and got used to them.  The idea of live blogging is just new and so those issues will be worked out.  Afterall, it is the news casting of the future.

[mtraininjax]

These are the same judges who would rather use paper than see the proceedings on their computer screen. They will be generationed out soon enough.