ICYMI: Des Moines Register: “Grassley is Right. Federal Courts Should Allow Cameras.”

Grassley is right. Federal courts should allow cameras.
June 28, 2026
By The Register's Editorial Board
The Des Moines Register

This should be the year that Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa gets his way on allowing cameras and other devices inside federal courtrooms...

Today, the federal judiciary is one of precious few institutions, especially in government, that has resisted the use of technology to connect to Americans. It's time to correct that.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, which Grassley chairs, advanced two of his bills June 18. The Sunshine in the Courtroom and Cameras in the Courtroom acts would give judges and Supreme Court justices discretion to allow video and other recording equipment into their proceedings. The bills are now eligible for debate by the full Senate.

It is helpful to think about this outside the abstract. When former Des Moines Public Schools Superintendent Ian Roberts was sentenced to prison June 29 for firearm and fraud offenses, journalists gathered in the Des Moines courtroom with notebooks ready to describe the scene. All electronic devices, including cellphones, were banned. The new federal courthouse is designed such that photographers cannot even position themselves to get stills and video of a defendant being delivered to the front door, as they sometimes could at the old courthouse.

Only the people who were in that room will ever know what Roberts' voice sounded when he spoke for about 15 minutes about his past and his crimes, including lying about his citizenship for decades. Only they will have a crystal-clear picture of Roberts' appearance as the community leader's fall from grace reached a conclusion. The Register's Kyle Werner ably narrated that "Roberts wore a green prison uniform, his beard longer and with a twinge more gray than when he last appeared publicly." But it isn't the same as seeing or hearing those moments.

At a time when producing and broadcasting streaming video from almost anywhere in the United States is all but expected, there is no excuse that the public's access to this chapter in a major public scandal is so filtered.

Grassley's efforts can change that.

...

Earlier this year, Grassley remarked on the Senate floor about the 40th anniversary of C-SPAN starting to air video of congressional proceedings. "Since its launch on June 2, 1986, C-SPAN 2 has offered uninterrupted, unfiltered access to the debates, the votes and the deliberations of the United States Senate," Grassley said.

It's past time for the federal judiciary to take a step in that direction...

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