Cosby Trial A Closed-Door Affair

At Bill Cosby’s trial, which begins this week, no cameras will be allowed and reporters tempted to tweet during the proceedings are being threatened with jail time. Cosby has been charged with drugging and sexually assaulting a Pennsylvania woman. In Pennsylvania, filming and still photography is never allowed in courtrooms, NBC 10’s Deanna Durante told NPR. What is unusual, Durante said, was the threat of fines or jail time for tweeting or releasing trial information to the internet in any capacity; reporters will be forced to turn their phones off during the trial. Court officials’ chief concerns are for the privacy of witnesses, as well as worries that some may try to perform for the audience, if there was one. “At worst, what it does is it guarantees that a less accurate version of events will get out to the public,” Gregg Leslie, with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, told NPR. “So what’s the benefit in that?”