NPPA - NDCA Comment 03-01-10

BEFORE THE THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA OAKLAND, CA ________________________________________________ RENEWED NOTICE CONCERNING REVISION OF CIVIL LOCAL RULE 77-3 _________________________________________ 77-3. Photography and Public Broadcasting COMMENTS OF THE NATIONAL PRESS PHOTOGRAPHERS ASSOCIATION MICKEY H. OSTERREICHER, GENERAL COUNSEL NATIONAL PRESS PHOTOGRAPHERS ASSOCIATION 3200 Croasdaile Drive Suite 306 Durham, NC 27705-2586 (919) 383-7246 March 1, 2010 Summary As both staff photographers and freelance photojournalists, members of the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) occupy a central role in still and audio-visual coverage of our nation’s courts. The technological advances in the size, quality, unobtrusiveness and capabilities of photographic and audio equipment over the past fifty (50) years has made the objections used to support a continuing ban on such coverage as obsolete as the equipment of that era. The widespread proliferation of television and the Internet have truly made those 1 medium more “commonplace an affair in the daily life of the average person” than Justice Harlan could have ever imagined 45 years ago when he opined upon the day when all reasonable doubt would be “dissipated” about the “likelihood that its use in courtrooms [would] disparage 2 the judicial process.” Justice Stewart could not have been ...