Judiciary Rejects Media Bid to Allow Cameras in Criminal Trials

A judiciary panel voted against allowing broadcasting of certain high-profile federal criminal trials, rebuffing earlier requests by news organizations to revise the ban for President-elect Donald Trump’s criminal trial.

The Judicial Conference’s Advisory Committee on Criminal Rules voted nearly unanimously on Wednesday to adopt a recommendation against changing the federal rule, known as Rule 53, that prohibits photography and broadcasting in the courtroom during criminal trials.

Still, the effort to change the judiciary rules before Trump stood trial is moot. The judiciary already signaled rule changes take several years, past any trial date. After, Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election, the special counsel overseeing his prosecutions is working to unwind them under the Justice Department’s policy against prosecuting sitting presidents.

During the meeting in New York, Senior Judge Michael Mosman of the Oregon federal trial court, who led the subcommittee that studied the issue, raised privacy and security concerns for jurors and witnesses in trials. He also cited what he described as a lack of empirical data on how permitting cameras would impact justice, such as the effect on jury verdicts.

It’s true, Mosman said, that the judiciary didn’t fully protect security and privacy for trial participants when it decided to make those proceedings open to the public in the courtroom. But privacy is “a question of degree,” he said, posing examples of a credit card user who allows third-party companies to track their spending versus someone who makes all of their Venmo transactions public.

Making an exception for only a high-profile trial would result in a “patchwork” system where only some defendants are subjected to enhanced media coverage, he warned. And he dismissed concerns that allowing such trials to be broadcast would discourage fake coverage by artificial intelligence, or undermine democracy.

“I think I’m as committed to democracy as anyone I know,” Mosman said. “I guess I think it’s hardy enough to survive the absence of cameras in courtrooms for big trials.”

Other judges at the meeting raised similar concerns. Judge Jacqueline Nguyen of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recounted her experience navigating cameras and crowds while working as a lawyer near the famously televised murder trial of OJ Simpson, and said people at the time were concerned that the broadcasting influenced how the lawyers presented their arguments.

And Senior Judge Robert Conrad, director of the Administrative Office of the US Courts, who also attended the meeting, warned that broadcasting might further discourage jury trials and ask too much of jurors.

Still, one committee member voted against adopting Mosman’s subcommittee recommendation: Justice Carlos Samour of the Colorado Supreme Court, who presided over the trial and sentencing of the man who killed 12 people in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater in 2012.

Samour said he decided to allow media organizations to tap into an already-installed camera feed, which the court controlled, to air those proceedings, under his state court’s policy that gives judges discretion to allow criminal trials to be broadcast so long as jurors aren’t shown.

At first, he said, some of the victims were angry he had granted the expanded media access. However, “by the end of the trial, each one of them thanked me for having done it,” Samour said. The televised access allowed victims to stay home some days, and for the community as a whole to watch the trial for themselves, he said.

“The public is not interested in 99% of what we do in the judicial branch,” Samour said. But in that 1% that does interest them, “it didn’t make sense to me to push them away.”

Mosman responded that, when state court judges “steeped” in this practice endorse courtroom cameras, “I’m forced to respond that they actually don’t know if it works.”

The committee action effectively shuts down a push by more than a dozen news organizations, including the New York Times and CNN, to either give federal judges discretion to allow broadcasting in criminal cases with significant public interest, or to create an exception for “extraordinary cases.”

In a Nov. 1 letter, those news outlets urged the judiciary to reject the subcommittee’s recommendation, published in agenda materials last month, and asked for the opportunity to appear before the judiciary and address concerns.

Bloomberg Law is operated by entities controlled by Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, which signed the letter.

Last month, NBC News asked the Washington federal judge overseeing Trump’s criminal case, on charges he tried to overturn the 2020 election, to consider allowing broadcasting of court hearings ahead of trial. Those hearings would focus on whether Trump can be prosecuted under a recent Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity.