Neither Phones Nor Cameras Nor Tweets in the Court
Monday, March 26, 2012
Neither Phones Nor Cameras Nor Tweets in the
Court
By: Michael D. Shear, New York Times
WASHINGTON - There was a time - before Twitter, cable TV,
bloggers and mobile apps - when political reporters in Washington
waited until the end of a big campaign rally, court case or
Congressional hearing before rushing to tap out their stories or
call in their scoops.
How quaint.
Politics here in the nation's capital now moves at the speed of
a tweet, feeding a culture in which knowledge is power and the
assumption is that events will unfold publicly in real time.
But starting Monday, during six hours of Supreme Court arguments
over the constitutionality of President Obama's health care law,
the city's political metabolism will be slowed unwillingly to
predigital speeds.
On three mornings this week, a select group of reporters,
lawyers and observers will crowd into the court's august chamber as
the nine justices grill the advocates in a case freighted with huge
legal and political implications. No Twitter messages will be
allowed. No one in the room will be permitted to make a telephone
call. There will be no BlackBerrys or laptops or iPads to blog
with.
Pundits will chatter on cable TV. And a media-political circus
is expected outside the court, where a line started forming at 9:30
a.m. on Friday - as if a new iPAD were about to go on sale.
But for those two hours, the rest of the world will have little
idea what is happening inside.
"It's going to be a very weird flashback to the old ways of
doing things," said Eddie Vale, a spokesman for Protect Your Care,
a group that supports the health care law. "It will be like those
old-fashioned movie scenes where the reporters fight each other to
get into the phone booth to report it in."
Rarely has so much in-the-moment attention been focused on
arguments before the Supreme Court, which stubbornly sticks to
traditions that predate the communications revolution. "NO
electronics devices," a court memorandum says. "Note taking only
material is allowed in the Courtroom (i.e., pen & pad)."
But the law has become the focus of an argument about Mr.
Obama's philosophy of government, and an issue in the presidential
campaign. That means intense interest among readers and viewers,
many of whom have gotten used to watching democratic uprisings half
a world away unfold before their eyes.
News organizations are doing their best to balance the court's
old-fashioned rules and the new pressures to report what is going
on as it happens.
The Associated Press plans to have two reporters in the court
listening to the arguments. But one of them has instructions to
leave about halfway through, file a short "urgent" story for the
news service's members, and then post on Twitter whatever is
known.
Sally Buzbee, the Washington bureau chief for The A.P., said she
had resisted the urge to tell her reporters to dash out after the
first few minutes.
"There's a real tension here between running out after the first
quote and getting some substantive sense of what's really going on
in there," Ms. Buzbee said. "Our interest here is getting
information out as fast as possible. Who knows what's going to
happen? And there's certainly huge interest in that."
Like other news organizations, The A.P. petitioned the court to
allow television cameras in the courtroom for the hearings. That
request was denied. The consolation prize? Audio recordings of the
arguments will be released on the same day.
Networks will probably broadcast parts of the recordings once
they are available, said Sam Feist, CNN's Washington bureau chief.
But like The A.P., the networks, and their anchors, will have to
wait for sporadic reports during the arguments.
Mr. Feist said that while interest in the proceedings would be
intense and CNN planned regular updates, he did not expect the
arguments to yield any bombshells.
"I'm not convinced that there will be breaking news during the
argument," Mr. Feist said. "If there's news, we will make sure our
viewers know it. We have the ability to send people out if we think
the argument warrants it."
Advocacy groups, too, are having to make contingency plans as
they prepare to try to seize the moment to influence public opinion
about the health care law.
Mr. Vale's group is planning to hold a news conference at 10
a.m. on Monday as the arguments begin. But its second news
conference, in the afternoon, will not occur until Protect Your
Care's leaders huddle with lawyers who were inside the court, so
they know what actually happened.
"Waiting a couple of hours is like what waiting a couple of days
used to be," Mr. Vale said. But he said that the group would not
have much to say until it knew what went on in the courtroom.
"If Justice Kennedy sneezes, everybody is going to be arguing
for 10 hours about what that meant," Mr. Vale said.
That may be exactly the kind of speculation and commentary that
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and his colleagues were hoping to
avoid when they turned down live cameras for the arguments.
"The court is right about this. This is not a breaking story
where there are 'Aha!' moments," said Mike McCurry, a White House
press secretary for Bill Clinton in the 1990s. "They are trying to
deliberate and probe and get the answer right. We don't want tweets
on every little aspect of this."
He added, "This is a great example of where we want news and
media organizations to slow down, give us a comprehensive
report."
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