By Ted Gest >> In the fast-paced media environment of 2025, how has news coverage of the courts evolved since the classic portrayal of “The Front Page”? The Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur drama in the 1920s was set in the press room of Chicago’s criminal courts building, where cigar-chomping, card-playing reporters phoned in sensational stories about
By William H. Freivogel and Ted Gest A new Missouri law passed last year deletes the names of victims and witnesses in court documents making Missouri courts the least transparent in the nation, experts say. Among the witness names deleted are police officers. Eugene Volokh, a nationally known libertarian legal commentator, called the law “a
While almost all state trial courts allow some level of still and video camera coverage of court proceedings, the rules on usage of modern communications devices and techniques – blogging, tweeting, texting and emailing using cellphones, tablets and other devices – are a wild patchwork of policies which vary from state to state, courthouse to
