Order in the Court

There are Americans, it turns out, who wish we'd seen courtroom zoom-ins of Martha Stewart's composed angst, who have longed to watch defendant Scott Peterson squirm, who actually want more wall-to-wall coverage of the off-the-wall Michael Jackson. There are Americans who fear the quieting of Kobe Bryant's upcoming sexual assault case, who grieve the media blackout on testimony in the upcoming Robert Blake murder trial.

I'm not one of them. In recent months, in the dawning of a year that will be notable for its celebrity trials, a number of state judges have put restrictions on the media coverage of their high-profile cases. And I thank those judges, not just as a TV critic who'd rather not have to study the iconography of Jackson's eye makeup, but as a person who finds the bottomless tabloid joy in celebrity woes woeful.

Our democratic right to know about these trials, through newspaper and TV coverage, does not mean we need to sleep, eat, and breathe images from them for months at a time, following them as we have followed the soapy traumas of the "Real World" roommates, dissecting the evidence as if we were playing a board game. In the age of reality TV, as cameras transform even the most humiliating moments into sensationalized entertainment, it's reassuring to hear a few lone voices saying "no cameras."

Each judge who is forbidding live courtroom footage -- at pretrial hearings (Bryant), during testimony (Blake), in any part of the trial (Peterson), or at the arraignment (Jackson) -- has his or her own reasons for making that decision. Some of these robed ones want to avoid a media circus, and others have what Court TV anchor and managing editor Fred Graham calls "Ito-phobia -- a fear of looking as bad as Judge [Lance] Ito did in the O.J. Simpson case." The former are protecting their trials from camera-loving lawyers and intimidated witnesses, the latter are protecting themselves from public embarrassment.

Either way, I also see the judges protecting us from our own camera-centrism, our obsession with video access to everything from the awkward meetings on "Blind Date" and the violent arrests on "Cops" to the explicit description of Jackson's alleged molestation.

Cameras aren't allowed in federal courtrooms, which is why we were spared images of Stewart's sobbing assistant, for instance, as she testified against her boss. And yet the media covered the Stewart trial extensively, even interviewing jury members after they'd delivered their verdict. I do not feel at all deprived of information about the case, even if there will never be a "Saturday Night Live" spoof of the tearful assistant, even if all we got for visuals were courtroom sketches and courthouse exits and entrances. It was enough -- more than enough, really -- to see daily accounts in newspapers, on the 6 o'clock news, on "Entertainment Weekly," on "Celebrity Justice."

Seeing and believing

Barbara Cochran completely disagrees."

Rather than somebody telling you what happened," says Cochran, president of the Radio-Television News Directors Association, "wouldn't it be more accurate to see for yourself what happened, what the assistant's demeanor was?" Cochran, whose organization represents electronic journalists in more than 30 countries, believes cameras ensure a more faithful rendering of the facts. "To argue against cameras is to say that we prefer the less accurate version of what happened, that we'd rather have reporters paraphrasing what was said on the stand rather than showing in reality what was said on the stand."

Pat Lalama, who covers cases for "Celebrity Justice," agrees, saying that her ability to be accurate is at stake when cameras are barred. "Judges will say, `When you guys come into the courtroom, you only show snippets, and you only show the salacious stuff,' and yes, there's some merit to that, let's be honest. But at the same time, if they want us to be able to tell a more complete story, they should let us into the courtroom, and there should be no conditions, except for protecting children or domestic violence victims, etc.

"It should be a free market, so that people can better understand the judicial process and so that we'll have less of a chance to be left to our own devices and take things out of context."

But do cameras in the courtroom offer accuracy or merely a false sense of accuracy? If we were watching real footage of the Peterson trial, we might be tempted to think we have a complete knowledge of the case. But we would be wrong. We are always dependent on the Pat Lalamas and the MSNBC/CNN talking heads of the world, because actual trials don't unfold as concisely as those on "The Practice," where the writers spell out the issues for the viewer.

Most of us need media explication to fully comprehend litigation, just as we have relied on experts to untangle the Byzantine dynamics of the marriage-amendment votes in the Massachusetts House. Indeed, we are always vulnerable to the reporting skills of TV and newspaper journalists, whether it comes to coverage of a war or of the justice system.

Court TV's Graham, who argued unsuccessfully before a Peterson judge to get cameras into the preliminary hearing, says his cause is suffering unfairly due to negative attitudes about reality TV. "It's rubbing off on coverage of trials, and I think it's illogical that it is. `Reality' television -- it's a misnomer, because it's all engineered to be as entertaining as possible. Coverage of trials on TV is the absolute flip side of that, because it's the fly-on-the-wall approach in which everything that happens in that courtroom is shown as if you were sitting there, and nothing is done that would not be done exactly the same way if a camera were not there."

But Court TV is one of the few outlets actually able to provide gavel-to-gavel coverage of celebrity cases. Even when cameras are allowed in the courtroom, most media outlets end up presenting heavily edited versions of the long day's events, with an emphasis on the dishy moments -- an approach that isn't as far from the celebrity reality soap "The Surreal Life" as we'd like to think it is.

Electronic watchdog

Cochran also points out that a camera in the courtroom serves as a monitoring device, especially in a celebrity trial. "The public has every right to see that the celebrity is not getting better treatment than they deserve, but also that the celebrity is not getting worse treatment than they deserve."

Still, there are always people in the courtroom, including reporters in many cases, who are monitoring the proceedings; the trial is public, with or without cameras. Indeed, the presence of a camera could affect the fairness of a celebrity trial as much as its absence, if it inspires lawyers to advertise themselves to a country of potential clients. Cameras don't automatically bring integrity with them.

And really, any ordinary TV viewer who says he or she is watching celebrity trial footage to gauge fairness probably claims to look at Playboy or Playgirl for the articles. Instead of serving principles of fairness and accuracy, cameras in these trials only serve to promote gossipy entertainment and goose Nielsen ratings. Star cases aren't about the real crimes, the real victims, and the real litigation issues; they're about water-cooler excitement, David Letterman gags, Dominick Dunne scandal blather, and 24-hour cable news fodder.

Graham says that if that's true, so what. "It's an elitist notion that the great unwashed shouldn't be permitted to indulge themselves in this sort of tabloid satisfaction," he says. "Abraham Lincoln was the most entertaining trial lawyer in the state of Illinois. People came down and sat and watched old honest Abe try cases. That's in the American tradition. Some people who have loftier values say, `You shouldn't get your entertainment on such a low level as when someone is accused of killing his wife.' Maybe the people who say that prefer to go the opera, but other people would rather see a trial. In a democracy, maybe each person should be able to do their own thing."

And yet, even though I don't like opera, I will cringe watching TV treat the Jackson case or the Blake case with greater urgency than, say, the Sept. 11 commission hearings. When the media staked out the Santa Barbara Municipal Airport for many hours waiting for Jackson to surrender in November, it was a small warning sign of what will happen once the trial starts in earnest. If the Jackson judge continues to keep cameras out of the trial, at least there's some possibility of diminished coverage. As Graham points out, "The coverage of trials and judicial matters is greatly reduced when the camera is not allowed in."

Ultimately, the cameras in celebrity trials are watching for dollars, not for conscience. Media outlets are gung ho to interrupt programming with "Breaking News" featuring Jackson's housekeeper or his security guard, just to keep us tuned in and talking. Me, I'd rather take refuge in TV Land.

Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com.