Comments@THE GUSS REPORT-Largely unknown to most people before the pandemic, Zoom is the video chat service now ingrained in daily life around the planet, keeping colleagues, schoolmates, congregations, and families in contact at a safe social distance.
It is a silver lining of the COVID experience that will improve life moving forward by enabling us to take jobs and do other things previously considered too far away.
But life often takes time to catch up with technology.
Zoom was also a key part of embarrassing 2020 moments like the mortifying end of CNN analyst Jeffrey Toobin’s career. It was also the conduit for the mass resignation of the Oakley Union Elementary School District Board in the Bay Area after it realized snarky comments it made about parents during a Zoom meeting were not private.
And then there’s the situation into which this column recently stepped.
In January, I prepped a story on the federal sentencing hearing of Mitch Englander, who admitted to felonies he committed while serving on the LA City Council. I hadn’t known that the hearing would be viewable on the internet, but I checked into it after friends texted its Zoom link.
It was all rather innocent as I waded into the meeting ankle-deep in figurative calm waters that would soon turn hot and rise to my chest.
The hearing link texted to me was no different than thousands of others most of us click to transport ourselves across the web. It led me to the Zoom sign-in page and then a black screen with the federal court logo. After a few minutes of idle chatter between the parties that would participate in the hearing, the formalities started as the prosecution and defense teams launched into their sentencing recommendations before U.S. Judge John F. Walter.
Somewhere during the hearing, I had the brilliant idea that even though it is streaming and accessible to millions of people on the web, some might be too busy to check it out, so I grabbed a single screenshot and tweeted it, as did others.
Major. Mistake. Like a do not cross the train tracks type of mistake.
Despite the hearing being public to all, capturing that image, let alone sharing it, is prohibited. My being unaware of this rule was no island of safety either, as I found out two days later when Judge Walter ordered me to explain why he should not hold me in contempt.
Since I took immediate measures to mitigate the situation, the Judge granted me time to explain what happened, which I did with screenshots of each step I took that morning, from the texted link and sign-in screens to the court having recordings of the proceedings, during which no warning was offered. In short, the court may not have known that someone could innocently access hearings without encountering a warning to not record them which, unbeknownst to some, is on the federal court website.
To my humbled good fortune, my immediate corrective actions, sincere apology, and linear explanation resulted in Judge Walter allowing me to walk away a wiser, more cautious observer. (Thanks, also, to my public records expert, attorney Paul Nicholas Boylan of Davis, California, for helping ensure that I didn’t make a bad situation worse.)
Another silver lining has surfaced in that warning-less Zoom access points for federal court hearings will be updated so others don’t make the same mistake.
This wasn’t the first time that Judge Walter demonstrated exceptional understanding and judicial restraint in a media coverage situation. Another instance was in 2018 when the LA Times found itself in trouble for publishing restricted federal court case information until the news outlet proved that access to it was mistakenly granted by court personnel.
This escapade raises the question of why others who tweeted similar images of the same Englander hearing and who know about this cautionary tale have yet to hit the delete key on those images, unless they are looking to pick an unwinnable fight with the federal court.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, was runner-up for the 2020 Los Angeles Press Club journalism award for Best Online Political Commentary and has contributed to CityWatch, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Cumulus Media, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star-News, Los Angeles Downtown News, and the Los Angeles Times in its Sports, Opinion and Entertainment sections and Sunday Magazine, among other publishers. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch. You can follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
