Justice Antonin Scalia said Thursday night he opposes televising Supreme Court proceedings because reporters would misuse footage to inaccurately portray the court.
“The problem is, for every person who watches us from gavel to gavel, there will be 10,000 who will watch a 15 or 30 second takeout on the nightly news,” he said in a C-SPAN question-and-answer session hosted by Harvard’s Marvin Kalb. “And I guarantee you, that will not be characteristic of what we do. It will be man bites dog. So why should I participate in the miseducation of the American people?”
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who took part in the Q&A, also chimed in.
“I think it’s probably inevitable, because there’s going to be so much pressure for it. And because other courts do it,” she said, adding that she’d be “very much concerned with mis-portraying” matters of the high court.
