Tennessee’s Supreme Court is proposing to add electronic devices such as cellphones, tablets and laptops to the list of equipment requiring a judge’s permission for news media to use in the courtroom.
Media already must get judges’ permission to use some equipment, including cameras and recording devices. The Friday news release from the Supreme Court said the proposed revision “would add to the tools permitted by journalists.”
“Transparency of court proceedings is an important part of maintaining an open government,” Chief Justice Sharon Lee said in the release. “These proposed changes embrace the tools used by the media to keep the public informed about what’s happening in our court system.”
Some journalists, though, see it as a First Amendment intrusion. Knoxville News Sentinel courts reporter Jamie Satterfield posted on her KnoxNews blog:
“It goes beyond rules on simply allowing or disallowing a photo or a video to be taken in court to actually allowing a judge to decide if I can communicate to my followers and readers from inside his or her courtroom.”
Read the proposed rule at www.bit.ly/1wJMLa3.
The deadline for comments is May 12.