Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who once supported having TV cameras in the courtroom, charges in an new interview that it would instead “mis-educate” Americans on court happenings and snippets would be taken out of context by news stations.
“I am sure it will mis-educate the American people,” Scalia told C-SPAN’s Brian Lamb who has spent years pushing to put his cameras in the Supreme Court.
Scalia, in an interview to be broadcast Sunday as part of C-SPAN’s “Q & A” program, said that TV’s claim has been that live coverage would educate the country on how the court works. But he said that during court sessions, the judges are just going over “dull stuff” and it wouldn’t help to show how judges make decisions. “They wouldn’t see all of that,” he said.
Lamb challenged Scalia, saying that the judge, an advocate of the First Amendment, should be supportive of cameras in the courtroom. But Scalia said that the First Amendment “doesn’t require us to televise our proceedings.”
