Always nice when talk leads to positive action

By Lisa Carnahan
KPA News Bureau Director

Meetings.
Meetings can be boring, often are considered a waste of time and one major complaint is they seldom lead to any real action.

I’m pleased to tell you that KPA shouldn’t be accused of non-action in regard to our involvement over the past few years in a series of meetings that gave reporters and judges a chance to air their grievances and opinions of each other’s jobs.

Now, as a result of what we’ve learned from these gatherings, KPA is embarking on a plan to formulate a training program for court reporters. That training would include a handbook on how to cover the courts in Kentucky.

The bench-press forums have been held all over the state, with the last one scheduled for March in Somerset. They include print and broadcast reporters from the area and the district and circuit judges from the judicial district where the meeting’s being held.

The discussion may take a little while to get going, but usually gets heated up fairly quickly. The judges start sharing their experiences of working with reporters who cover their courts and reporters give the flip side.

Reporters typically relate stories about uncooperative judges, frustration over gag orders and the legalese that fills court documents.

Judges talk about reporters who are unfamiliar with the workings of the court, court terminology and wouldn’t know a plaintiff from a plankton ... and that’s where KPA comes in.

Our training program will be held regionally across the state and in a daylong format, give newspaper reporters and broadcast ones, too (if they’re interested), the basic information they need to intelligently, professionally and successfully cover the courts of the Commonwealth.

We’re not going to try what would be a futile attempt to cram four years of law school into a day: you don’t have to be a lawyer to be a court reporter (nice, yes, but not a requirement). But you do need to know the basic procedures, terminology and for lack of a better term, the do’s and don’ts of the beat.

There are certain things we’ve learned from this series of bench-press meetings that are major irritants of those women and men in the long black robes and we’ll share that type of information, too.

Our partner in this is the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) and a grant is being sought to help cover the costs of printing the handbooks and putting on the training sessions.

AOC, which also worked with us on all the bench-press forums, has been extremely supportive going back to the first forum at Shakertown in November 1996.

The idea of getting judges and journalists together to air grievances was endorsed wholeheartedly by then-Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Stephens, who participated in the two-day Shakertown meeting.

The forums are also supported by Stephens’ successor, Chief Justice Joseph Lambert.

Stephens said a continuing dialogue between representatives of the bench, bar and press was vital. He said even though the parties involved may not come away from the conversation convinced of the other side's position, communication itself was the key. Many newspaper participants at the forums have indicated their commitment to having similar, regular meetings on a local level, between their judges and newsroom staff.

Something else KPA will pursue as another way to improve the often-frayed relationship between the bench and press is presentations, possibly titled “Understanding the Media,” or “Working with the Press,” at judicial conferences.

We recognize that inexperienced court reporters aren’t the only problem. A lack of understanding of the media’s role is often-times to blame as well when things sour between judges and journalists. Anything we can do to educate others about who we are and why we do what we do can’t hurt.

We also aren’t kidding ourselves into thinking that any amount of training for reporters or presentations to judges will or should totally remove the adversarial role between the two. But better communication never hurt any relationship.

The goal is to improve the news coverage Kentucky courts generate by educating the ones who deliver the news. It’s a worthwhile endeavor for everyone involved.

(The bench-press forums are sponsored by the University of Louisville's Center for Humanities and Civic Leadership in association with AOC, KPA, the Associated Press and the Kentucky Broadcasters' Association.)

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