Vol. 4 No. 4 (August, 1994) pp. 114-115
THE WATCHFUL EYE: AMERICAN JUSTICE IN THE AGE OF THE TELEVISION
TRIAL by Paul Thaler. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers,
1994. 239pp. Cloth .
Reviewed by, Elliot E. Slotnick, Department of Political Science,
The Ohio State University.
The premise of Paul Thaler's THE WATCHFUL EYE can be easily
stated. Television has altered the basic nature of American
criminal justice processes through the incursion of cameras in
America's courtrooms. At bottom, perceptions of courtroom
processes change and all the relevant players -- judges,
prosecutors, defense attorneys, witnesses, defendants and juries
-- evince altered behavior as a consequence of their encounter
with television. The subtext underlying Thaler's analysis,
repeated in numerous guises as a continuing mantra throughout the
book, is that the changes wrought in the courtroom by
television's presence have not, by and large, been good ones.
At the outset, the reader is informed that the "statistical
myopia" evident in surveys aimed at assessing the impact of
televised judicial proceedings will not be present here. Rather,
Thaler employs a richer approach that includes the extensive use
of secondary source material, as well as over 50 interviews with
journalists, academics, and the relevant actors in high profile
criminal justice proceedings. In particular, a case study of the
highly publicized New York City trial of Joel Steinberg, accused
of murdering his 6 year old daughter, relies heavily on
interviews with most of the trial's key participants including
the judge, key witnesses, (in particular, Hedda Nussbaum),
attorneys on both sides of the case, jurors, and even Joel
Steinberg, the defendant.
Thaler's eclectic study begins with an historical overview of the
media-court relationship with a particular focus on the camera in
the courtroom controversy as it has evolved since the medium's
infancy. The chapter serves well as a primer on the legal
controversies engendered by the countervailing interests often
posed between the First Amendment's free press dictate, and the
6th Amendment's right to a fair trial. A full chapter focuses on
the emergence of the Courtroom Television Network (Court TV) as a
"player" in this domain, with the author doing little
to conceal his dubiousness about the enterprise. Steven Brill,
the driving force behind Court TV, bears the brunt of much of
Thaler's criticism and skepticism. Before reaching the Steinberg
case study (which accounts for approximately half of the book),
Thaler describes television's role in other celebrated criminal
trial settings including those involving Claus von Bulow, Amy
Fisher, William Kennedy Smith, and Rodney King.
In focusing on the Steinberg case, Thaler attempts to bring a
theoretical perspective to the analysis, utilizing concepts such
as the distraction factor, the self- consciousness factor,
feedback, and mediated feedback in an effort to unravel the
consequences of television's presence on courtroom proceedings
and outcomes. At best, these concepts serve as an organizational
device for categorizing a highly descriptive, anecdotal account
of the Steinberg trial proceedings. Indeed, one cannot help but
be
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disappointed with what emerges from the author's extensive
interviewing. For the most part, the reader becomes privy to a
stream of self-serving assertions and post-hoc rationalizations
from all the case participants. Perhaps most disappointing is the
lack of insights gained from over 50 hours of interviewing with
the defendant himself, Joel Steinberg.
In a fundamental sense, THE WATCHFUL EYE fails to offer very much
that is "new" or that a casual consumer of the
televised courtroom would not have already seen for him or
herself. Indeed, Thaler's observations are standard fare and have
been repeated tenfold in the daily journalistic commentary and
lay bantering about the penultimate television trial scenario,
the current O. J. Simpson double murder case. While a "good
read," the style of the book is somewhat reminiscent of
Woodward and Armstrong's THE BRETHREN in its allusions to
individual states of mind, and its characterizations of the
innermost feelings of key participants in the phenomena under
study. In giving the Steinberg case study a docudrama feel, it
appears that a good deal of creative license has been taken.
Obviously, the interface between First and Sixth Amendment rights
raises complex issues. Thaler's analysis, in my view, fails to
adequately confront or take account of the "public
domain" reality of much of the information that television
is criticized for making public. Nor does the author successfully
fend off the allegation that sensational trials will be treated
sensationally (and, perhaps, with a lesser hold on reality -- see
the Central Park Jogger case) sans cameras in the courtroom.
Curiously, and disappointingly, the book does not address
sufficiently the potential remedies, including those judicially
imposed, for the possible clash of constitutional values. When,
for example, addressing the possibility of sequestering the jury
in the Steinberg case, Thaler clearly sides with Judge Rothwax's
assertion that such an action would bring an untoward
inconvenience to the jurors so burdened.
Throughout THE WATCHFUL EYE, Paul Thaler professes to be an
agnostic on the bottom line issue of television's beneficial or
baneful effects in trial proceedings. Even a casual reader,
however, would quickly conclude that the author of this study is
a doubting critic of the televised courtroom. That, however, is
not the book's major pitfall. Rather, Thaler is never very
precise in fleshing out the actual substantive impact of
televised trials on the administration of criminal justice. For
every assertion made, a counter assertion is alluded to. All
interviewed subjects cannot help but report their own subjective
and self-serving perspectives on their experiences in a televised
trial. While Thaler offers the reader a useful overview of the
television trial controversy, his book does not yield significant
new insights or conclusions. The reader is left with a
generalized sense that television coverage of trials "makes
a difference." Yet we are also left with little clue about
what, in the final analysis, the consequences of that
"difference" are.
Copyright 1994