Page 16 - Courting the Media Contemporary Perspectives on Media and Law

Introduction – ―Mediating Mediation‖ 7

If there have been issues based on the uneven distribution of resources,
then this has most certainly changed. One pragmatic reason for excluding
cameras from court was their obtrusive nature, how even a small crew would
provide distraction from proceedings. This is no longer the case. Digital
cameras can be relatively discreet in use, and courts can maintain their own in-
house systems as part of their regular architecture. Instead of being reactive or
passive to the media system, the court can become a producer in its own right.
Whereas earlier media-law relations were based on a disparity or unequal
distribution of media resources within the public domain, with the broadcast
and film industry maintaining a virtual monopoly on high quality equipment,
the nature of media ownership and production has changed. The concept of
active, co production by the legal institution, can produce radical solutions to
the long standing problematic of media access. The idea of shared or pooled
material, supplied by one media operator but available to competitors, or
supplied by the court system itself, is a radical renegotiation of law/ media
relations.
One can speak of a new contractual or regulatory framework between
differing professional sectors in the public sphere. The commercial practice of
the broadcast industry was always framed by regulation – of program and
commercial content, of licence, of censorship, of ownership. The law has
always had a foot in the backdoor of media industries, through the
maintenance of substantive or media law. The regulation of access to courts,
and concerns about interference with proceedings, contempt and defamation
linked to the proceeding of cases, was but one part of a plethora of
interventions and regulatory practices exercised by law in regard to media.

TASERS AND THE STATE OF VIDEO TECHNOLOGY

Christina Spiesel (―The Fate of the Iconic Sign‖) shows the opportunity to
define and respond to digital media forms. One presumption made about the
nature and function of media, and video in particular, that helped justify and
determine the regulatory regimes of the past, in particular the use of video in
court, and access of television to court, can also be seen to be changing, or at
least needful of change. That presumption was that video could be understood
as an essentially passive and realist medium that at best provided a literal copy
of its subject. This presumption helps understand the range and function of
video in areas such as videoconference and interview, that have been seminal
in the use of video in court environments. Video is a convenient tool for visual