Imagine That

IMAGINE THAT YOU are sitting in a classroom in Sever Hall on the morning of a big exam. You have been tense for three days. You didn't sleep very well last night. You're rather nervous as the proctor passes out the blue books.

Suddenly, a television crew enters the room, shines its lights and begins recording. Your exam is being broadcast live throughout metropolitan Boston. Until the test is over, you realize, your angst will be watched by whoever cares to see.

If you are a reasonable person, you would probably be disconcerted by the camera crew's presence. You might become more nervous than you had already been. Conceivably, you might become distracted and confused during the exam, even if the material had been clear in your mind only hours earlier.

Now suppose that, instead of a student taking an exam, you are a rape victim. You have pressed charges and your case is going to trial. Faced with a hostile attorney interrogating you about intimate and painful subjects, you tension is orders of magnitude greater than that of a student facing only an empty blue book.

The consequences of distraction include wounding embarrassment--not to mention a rapist's going free and your being officially told, in effect, that you were not raped, no matter what you think. And the cameras are there, and their audience is nationwide.

In the wake of the Smith rape trial in Florida, the role of the mass media in American courtrooms must be reexamined. Is it a good thing that a woman who claimed that she was raped had her blacked out face broadcast by every media outlet from CNN to Saturday Night Live? If not, is it a necessary evil, the only alternative to which is government censorship?

The answer to both questions is no.

THERE ARE TWO POSSIBLE ways to argue for intensive broadcast media coverage of trials, rape or otherwise. One is consequentialist: claiming that courts work better when they know they are being watched. The other is categorical: invoking a public right to know or a right to untrammeled free press. As applied to events such as the Smith rape trial, neither of these arguments makes sense.

First, consider the consequentialist argument, which is rooted in the knowledge that closed-door trials are Stalinist stuff. Abuses of justice breed easily when nobody knows that the judges are doing. Keeping trials open and public does not ensure that convictions and acquittals will not be based on arbitrary whim. Without reporting on courtroom activities, the guardians of justice are themselves unguarded.

But arguing for network teletrials because secret sentencing is bad is as brainless as urging rock climbers to carry 50-gallon water canteens. If you go hiking in the sun, take some water, but don't take so much that you can't walk.

If rape trials were secret, maybe more rapists would go free (which already happens all the time) and more innocent people would be convicted (which also happens, albeit less often). Nobody is saying that the trials should be secret. Anyone who wants to can go watch, and all the proceedings are matters of public record.

Everyone knows that the glare of television lights amplifies pressure and makes clear thinking more difficult. Rape victims are nervous enough testifying in public courtrooms; describing one's own rape to total strangers, in the presence of the rapist, while a lawyer tries to destroy the testimony will make anyone tense enough. CNN on the scene only makes it worse, and there is no "openness" interest to cut the other way.

A television audience does not guarantee any higher a level of judicial integrity than that ensured by the audience physically present. The consequentialist argument, then, actually works against TV trial coverage.

Now, consider the categorical, rightbased argument, which includes the constitutional right of free press and the more abstract concept of the public's "right to know." Free press is serious business. It is legally protected and vital to our open society. And it is in no way abridged by keeping television cameras out of trial courts.

Free press means that no government censor blacks out what the papers print or the networks broadcast. It does not mean that journalists have carte blanche to impose themselves and their equipment wherever they choose. No one has the right to install a camera in your bathroom for example.

Yes, courtrooms are public places. So is the Oval Office, and George Bush need not admit Sam Donaldson whenever Sam wants an interview. Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School is a public place, and free press doesn't mean that Channel 5 can demand to broadcast geometry classes. News crews could claim, plausibly, that unwatched teachers gets away with sloppy teaching and that public interest requires press coverage. No government official will censor a story about poor math instruction in Massachusetts high schools. But nobody expects 15-year olds to concentrate on trapezoids while the cameras roll. And free press does not confer the right to try to make them.

That leaves only the question of the public "right to know," which would present a stirring challenge were it not for one minor problem: there's no such thing. We may want to know things about the world around us. It may be good for us to know what happens in government. We might be really, really curious to know the lurid details of a celebrity rape trial, so curious that newspapers figure they can sell a million copies by printing a fetishistic photo of a faceless (and therefore dehumanized) woman on the front page.

That's just sensationalism. It reflects only the dark corners of our minds, not any guaranteed "right to know," which has absolutely no constitutional, judicial or other legal basis. The "right to know" is at one with unicorns and Easter bunnies. That's just not the foundation for a very solid argument.

MAYBE WILLIAM KENNEDY Smith was guilty of rape. And maybe he wasn't. The jury though not. Suspect what we may, one way or another, we can't know for sure. But now everyone in America knows that accusing a big name of rape invites a live broadcast carnival. If you are raped by someone prominent and have the courage to press charges, you will not only go through the standard stress of deposition, cross-examination and other unpleasantries required by the legitimate right of the accused, but you will do it under the lights and in millions of kitchens and living rooms.

Rape victims should have the right to know that they won't be subjected to this kind of treatment.