Tweeting Deemed Not 'Broadcasting' And Allowed In Courtroom
from the nice-of-them dept
Michael Scott points us to a case in Connecticut state court, in which "broadcasting" from the courtroom was forbidden, but there was a debate over whether or not Twittering from the courtroom should be allowed. The arguments go back and forth, noting that there are some similarities to broadcasting with Twitter, but not necessarily enough. The judge then looked at the reason behind prohibiting broadcasting, and realized it was to keep direct images from being seen, but that reporting from the courtroom should be allowed. The only concern is if the actions were disruptive (such as with a loud keyboard), but noted that such problems could be dealt with on a case by case basis. The guy trying to restrict the use of Twitter claimed that such "communications tend to be either trivial or inaccurate and thus play no useful role in educating the public about the judicial process," but the judge pointed out that a court should not be controlling the "substance of courtroom reporting," and said that Twittering would be allowed, so long as there is no disruption (which would be dealt with specifically). Seems like a reasonable outcome.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: broadcasting, connecticut, courtroom, tweeting
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Holy spinning newspapers!
Follow this on Twitter! We're out of exclamation points?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Holy spinning newspapers!
This also just in: death of joke causes neck injuries across the country from severity of disgusted head shakes.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Doubly reasonable
Sadly, I'm impressed. This level of quality should be the norm.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Doubly reasonable
QFT
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Doubly reasonable
They do not want news stations with cameras sitting in the court room taking up space and distracting people. Think any time that there is a high profile case would it be good to have the four local stations and a national one or two taking up space.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]