Basically, with the exception of the people that have a vested interested in the courtroom, and courtroom proceedings, such as those in the legal field, journalists that cover trials, and friends and family of specific court cases, our public court rooms are mainly cleared of any disinterested observers, so that court cases, except for those of a certain notoriety, are simply done in the public, but watched by virtually nobody. Maybe that is a good thing, maybe it isn't, but in point of fact, in the era of the high-technology and universality of audio, video, streaming, blogs, and so forth, it seems like our court proceedings are a throwback to a bygone era and that therefore the less exposure that court cases get, the less accountability the public, in general, will hold the courts to. This means, in effect, we take it, more or less on faith, that our courts are fair, impartial, and just, but with little public oversight, this probably is not true.
America is a nation of all sorts of laws, some clearly outdated, some clearly self-serving, and the prohibition of cameras and picture taking in all federal court rooms, for example, seems to benefit only those that are part of that court system, and impair the ability of the public to be well informed. In fact, there are so many cases, on so many days, in so many court rooms, throughout America, clearly, even if as policy video-recording was allowed in most court cases, there simply would not be enough interest in virtually all cases, for there to be any traction in recording the overwhelming majority of cases. This means, in effect, that these laws ban something that would, in all likelihood, hardly ever be utilized for the public interest by the media, so that as a matter of public policy, the question should be re-written in such a way, as to ask if allowing the public recording of this public trial, would be clearly prejudicial against certain elements within the trial and to thereby get an injunction on that matter to decide it.
It does not make a lot of logical sense that our court rooms are open to the public, yet, picture taking, video and audio recording are not permitted or allowed in most cases. Yet, when we watch a court proceeding, in our mind, we take pictures, we absorb audio, and we record our own video, so that the recording has already been made. There isn’t any real good reason, why certain rules and regulations, could not be setup in such a way, to protect the anonymity of the jury, or certain witnesses, by either the deliberate blurring of their faces or by simply directing the camera to shoot only from the shoulders down and so forth. In addition, should a live camera be considered to be a potential danger to the integrity of the court proceeding, the recording could be tape-delayed, edited if necessary, and so forth in order to uphold the court's desire.
Furthermore, if a video recording is considered at the present time to be that "bridge too far", an audio recording should not be, as an audio, is simply the voices speaking, which could be transcribed, streamed in real time, or released in an edited form, with the removal of extraneous information. In fact, audio recordings of court trials that are of public interest would best be in keeping with the spirit of the law, that are trials are to be public as both a protection for the people as well as keeping the people informed as to how law is applied in their domain.