NY Times, Bloomberg, Mlex and Law360 ask judge to open Google trial

The New York Times has filed a motion, supported by Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, MLex, and Law360, to open a Google antitrust trial to the public and provide timely access to exhibits and testimony, reports Nilay Patel of The Verge.

Patel reports, “‘Sealing the courtroom is an extraordinary step in any case,’ argues the Times. ‘In this litigation, perhaps the most important antitrust trial in decades, the stakes are especially high. Excluding the public from the courtroom not only impedes its ability to understand how this consequential case is being litigated — it also undermines the public’s faith in its justice system.’

“The motion also argues that exhibits should be posted in a timely manner and that witness testimony should be unsealed and unredacted unless specific reasons are given. In particular, the motion argues that the testimony of Apple’s Eddy Cue and Google’s Jerry Dischler should be completely unsealed, ‘given the absence of any justification for these redactions.’

“Full disclosure: I’ve asked our legal team to sign The Verge and Vox Media on to any further motions of this kind since covering this trial has basically sucked.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.