CNN ASKS FOR DECISION ON TELEVISING TRIALS

Seeking to end a longtime ban on broadcast coverage of federal trials, Ted Turner’s Cable News Network asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to decide if the all-news cable network can televise some trials.

The petition filed by CNN attorneys and Harvard Law School professor Laurence H. Tribe, is an outgrowth of the company’s unsuccessful efforts last year to broadcast the U.S. District Court trial of Gen. William C. Westmoreland’s $120-million libel suit against CBS.

Although that trial unexpectedly ended on Feb. 18 when Westmoreland dropped his lawsuit after 18 weeks of testimony, CNN said it would continue its attempts to end the prohibition against live radio and TV coverage and still photographic coverage of federal trials.

Friday’s petition asks the Supreme Court to consider CNN’s appeal of lower-court rulings that refused to let the network televise the Westmoreland-CBS trial. The trial stemmed from a 1982 CBS documentary, “The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception.”

Neither CBS nor Westmoreland had objected to broadcast coverage of the trial, which began in New York on Oct. 9.

CNN’s Supreme Court petition basically “is a challenge to an absolute rule against cameras at any federal trial, regardless of circumstances,” said Stuart F. Pierson, whose Washington law firm was hired by CNN to help press its case for coverage.

He emphasized that CNN wasn’t seeking permission to broadcast all federal trials, but only those where the trial judge feels that the circumstances of the case could permit live coverage without affecting the trial process.

It could take several months before the high court decides whether to consider CNN’s petition, he said, but “we would hope that they (court members) would make a decision before June,” when the court takes a recess.

If the court accepts the case, he added, it’s doubtful that it would hear opposing arguments in the matter before next fall.

CNN first sought permission last August to cover the Westmoreland-CBS trial. A month later, presiding judge Pierre N. Leval, although saying he felt that the request “should be granted” and that such coverage was “inevitable,” denied the request.

Leval said that current federal rules left him no choice in the matter. A three-judge appellate court panel later denied CNN’s appeal of Leval’s reluctant decision.

That court ruled that “no case . . . has held that the public has a right to televised trials.” It said that the press and the public have a right to attend trials, but not to view them on television.

CNN, noting that 41 states have allowed live and taped coverage of state and local trials, contends that the federal ban violates First Amendment rights both for the press and the public in not giving the same access to courts that print journalists enjoy.

Its Supreme Court petition, CNN said, also argues that the appellate rulings that denied its request in the Westmoreland-CBS case are “clearly wrong to ignore advancements in audio-visual technology which permit the electronic media to cover a trial with no more intrusion than note-taking reporters and sketch artists.”

The Atlanta-based cable TV company, which serves 30 million homes, has spent more than $200,000 in seeking an end to the ban on live broadcasts of federal trials, company sources said.

CNN previously has offered live coverage of major state and local court trials, notably the Fall River, Mass., barroom rape case, the Carol Burnett libel suit against the National Enquirer and a Los Angeles doctor’s unsuccessful libel suit against CBS’ “60 Minutes.”