The Press: Demonstration & Duty

In a mock courtroom set up in Philadelphia for the American Bar Association last week, five news photographers busily took more than 300 pictures while a “trial” was in progress. The demonstration was staged by the National Press Photographers Association, which is campaigning to open U.S. courtrooms to news photographers (TIME, June 20). Taking pictures quietly, using high-speed film and other equipment that would not disturb the dignity of a court, the five photographers moved around the courtroom so quietly that many of the 300 lawyers present did not know a test was going on.

After the demonstration was over, without a single flashbulb fired, the “judges” turned in a split decision. “Very smoothly done,” said U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Herbert F. Goodrich. “Distracting a bit, but so is a pretty girl … It [might] drive witnesses crazy.” But another “judge,” University of Michigan Law Professor Charles W. Joiner, found the picture-taking “did not distract in any way.” He said he would be in favor of relaxing the Bar Association’s canon forbidding photography in courtrooms provided that the photographers “do not try to tell the judge how to run his court.”

Next day Attorney General Herbert Brownell reaffirmed his stand that the question of admitting photographers to courts should be reopened. Said he: “There have been so many new developments in photography in recent years that I feel it is the duty of the bar to re-examine the ban.”