Audience for Supreme Court Healthcare Argument Was High, Hopes Low for Policy Change

"The fact that this was such an important case and that the court dedicated three days of hearings to it shows how much public interest there was in the proceedings,” said Prof. Barbara Cochran of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and a former chairman of the Radio Television Digital News Association. “I would suspect that members of the court were surprised by how much attention there was and how much of the audio was used.” The high court turned down broadcasters’ request to televise the healthcare oral arguments, in keeping with past attempts such as the Bush v. Gore case that decided the presidential election in 2000.

Executives were disappointed but undaunted. “We're a television news organization, so we like to get cameras everywhere we can,” said Jeffrey Schneider, senior vice president at ABC News. “In terms of audience interest in seeing the highest court hold forth, we've always believed there would be great interest. We also think it’s an important part of American democracy, and that’s the most important reason to have cameras in the court. … We always have made the argument and we always will make the argument and perhaps one day that will change."

Only a few Supreme Court cases would rise to national attention beyond the core public affairs audience that tunes in for presidential debates, congressional proceedings and other policy coverage, executives said. “In that realm, there’s a very high interest in what the court does,” said General Counsel Bruce Collins of C-SPAN. “Every now and then, the audience for what the court does will expand beyond that natural audience to something larger, and that was the case with the Affordable Care Act and it was the case with Bush v. Gore."

C-SPAN would've shown video of the entire proceedings to the network’s 100 million households if cameras were allowed, a spokesman said. C-SPAN put the audio recordings online and over its channels as soon as the recordings were available, and replayed them in the evening. A C-SPAN poll last month found that 74 percent of Americans believe the court should allow TV coverage of oral arguments, up from 64 percent in December. Ninety-five percent of respondents were interested in the cases on the constitutionality of the healthcare law and 54 percent said they'd try to listen to the audio recordings. Penn Schoen Berland did online interviews last month of 1,000 adults and the poll had a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.

"There’s certainly an appetite to see the highest court in the land in action” on TV, said RTDNA Executive Director Mike Cavender. The group’s members reported good audience response to the audio oral arguments, he said. “Is it a big audience? Certainly not as big as it is for American Idol, but there absolutely would be an audience.” C-SPAN first sought to televise Supreme Court oral arguments 27 years ago, asking the court to allow cameras and encouraging senators to ask prospective Supreme Court justices about their views on televised oral arguments during their confirmation hearings. Legislation to require the high court to permit cameras died in the Senate last month, as it has multiple times previously. “It will probably be a cold day before the Congress forces the court to go on television because of the relationship among the three branches,” Collins said. “They respect each other’s authorities."

Some of the coverage of the healthcare reform oral arguments may discourage the Supreme Court from allowing video cameras, because of the potential for reducing complex, intellectual arguments to a short clip that could be distorted or ridiculed on talk shows and the Internet, some said. For instance, Justice Antonin Scalia’s analogy of the health insurance mandate to requiring people to eat broccoli became a sound bite across TV, radio and the Internet. “ He was making a point in the chamber and wanted to get a response to it and suddenly he is seen throughout the populace as a man who thinks the healthcare mandate is like buying broccoli,” Collins said. “He doesn’t think that, but I bet a lot of Americans think he thinks that, and it’s because it was on television,” he said. “He would say ’that’s how the media distorts our work.'"

Even supporters of opening the Supreme Court to cameras acknowledge the policy is unlikely to change, especially since Chief Justice John Roberts went on record opposing video of oral arguments. “I don’t think it’s any secret that there are some justices on the court who feel that if you're only going to carry bits and pieces of any argument, whether on the Obama healthcare law or anything else, that may do the overall process a disservice,” Cavender said. “We think that’s arguable. We feel that the public having access to any of this material in an editorial context would be valuable. … We certainly hope that the court at some juncture will see the benefit of full transparency in its arguments and sessions."

The Supreme Court could get a public image boost by lifting the veil of secrecy, said Prof. Richard Wald of Columbia University’s Journalism School. The court “has a public relations problem. It may be that the judges would find it valuable to them not to look as though they are divorced from the reality of the country, as we now see it, and they would want people on a regular basis to see what it is they do and how they function,” he said. “There have been various attempts to demystify the court over the past few years, and they've been small but serious. The radio distribution of Supreme Court open court discussion has been fairly successful."

Ninety-five percent of the C-SPAN respondents want a “more open and transparent” court. “The fact that the court is largely invisible seems like such an anomaly in this day and age,” especially compared to TV coverage of the two other branches of federal government, Cochran said. “Given the importance of this decision, for its own standing, the court needs to have the confidence of the public that this is an issue that’s being decided fairly. The more transparent they are, the better it is for the court as an institution.”