| Summary/Abstract |
This article examines the impact of live broadcast of trials on the behavior of trial participants and court decisions, which is a fundamental question raised by the United States Supreme Court in Estes v. Texas in 1965, but has largely been ignored by the advocates of China's recent initiative to promote and support live broadcast of trials. Using data collected from a court in China, we compare trials with and without live broadcasting. We find that trial participants' rate of speech (average speaking speed measured in words per minute) is slower in the presence of live broadcast, suggesting that they are more cautious. We do not find evidence that live broadcasting influences court decisions or judgments in civil or criminal cases. Our results provide preliminary evidence that live broadcasting makes trial participants more accountable and that it does not influence the fairness of trials.
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