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51 Washburn L.J. 349 (2011-2012)
Sunlight Is Still the Best Disinfectant: The Case for a First Amendment Right to Record the Police

handle is hein.journals/wasbur51 and id is 357 raw text is: Sunlight Is Still the Best Disinfectant: The Case for a First Amendment Right to Record the Police Steven A. Lautt* Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.1 I. INTRODUCTION It has been said that seeing is believing.2 To receive second-hand information, even from a trusted, reliable source, may still raise doubts about the authenticity of what has been reported. But to actually see something with our own eyes not only removes those lingering doubts but provides us with the joy, sadness, amazement, or outrage that can only come from seeing it for ourselves. Simply stated, images are compelling. To hear distant reports of famine in parts of Africa may evoke a general sense of concern about hunger in the third world. But to see Kevin Carter's haunting 1993 photograph of a starving Sudanese toddler crawling to reach a feeding center as a vulture looms nearby shocks our senses and compels us to take action.4 Thanks to the marvels of modern technology, people can now see with their own eyes the events that are shaping the world.5 News reports about * B.A. 2007, Tabor College; J.D. Candidate 2012, Washburn University School of Law. I am sincerely grateful for the insight and encouragement provided by Professor Michael Kaye and Professor Bill Rich. I would also like to thank my parents and my wife Diane for their love and support. 1. Louis D. BRANDEIS, OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY AND How THE BANKERS USE IT 92 (1913). 2. JULIUS CHARLES HARE & AUGUSTUS WILLIAM HARE, GUESSES AT TRUTH: BY Two BROTHERS 517 (1871). Seeing is believing, says the proverb; and most thoroughly is it verified by mankind from childhood upward. Though, of all our senses, the eyes are the most easily deceived, we believe them in preference to any other evidence. Id. (emphasis omitted). 3. See GLENN W. MOST, DOUBTING THOMAS 4 (2005). When we say 'Seeing is believing,' it is usually as a response to our hearing someone tell us about something that he says has happened or will happen but about which we are declaring that we shall remain skeptical so long as we have not witnessed it ourselves. Id. 4. See Bill Keller, Kevin Carter, a Pulitzer Winner for Sudan Photo, Is Dead at 33, N.Y. TIMES, July 29, 1994, http://www.nytimes.com/1994/07/29/world/kevin-carter-a-pulitzer-winner-for-sudan-photo-is-dead-at- 33.html. After the New York Times published Carter's photograph, hundreds of readers contacted the paper to find out the fate of the girl in the picture. Roberta Smith, One Image of Agony Resonates in Two Lives, N.Y. TIMES, Apr. 14 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/arts/design/15jaar.htl? pagewanted=all. One year after he took the photo, Carter took his own life. See Keller, supra. 5. See Seth F. Kreimer, Pervasive Image Capture and the First Amendment: Memory, Discourse, and the Right to Record, 159 U. PA. L. REv. 335, 348-49 (2011). Kreimer notes that amateur cell phone camera footage of the 2004 Asian tsunami and the 2005 bombing of the London Tube rapidly emerged as the foundation of public deliberation. Id. 349

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