LETTER: Selling Family Court misery as entertainment

In response to your Tuesday editorial about Family Court access:

Child custody proceedings are not a spectator sport. The purpose of the ACLU lawsuit is not to bring transparency into the courtroom. Rather, it is to allow tabloid journalists to broadcast private people’s custody cases online — to air couple’s dirty laundry — in order to get hits on YouTube, which earns revenue for the host. It’s all about schadenfreude.

If one visits the Our Nevada Judges website YouTube page, it’s apparent that Our Nevada Judges is not trying to expose the judges, but rather, the parents, whose private lives are packaged and sold as entertainment for the masses. Remember, they already have cameras in every courtroom. All proceedings are videotaped. To allow reporters to broadcast custody proceedings online will not straighten-out any crooked judges.

Nevada judges are crooked, not for lack of transparency, but because their power is virtually unlimited. In Nevada, there is no recourse against judges. Judges can’t be sued. Judges can’t be recalled. And the Nevada Judicial Commission has never removed a judge based on a litigant’s complaint.