C-SPAN Will Air Live Audio From Trump Travel Ban Case

C-SPAN will carry live audio from the oral argument in a legal challenge to President Donald Trump's revised travel ban.

The argument, in International Refugee Assistance Project v. Trump, will air Monday, May 8, at 2:30 p.m. from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

C-SPAN, which is a public service provided by the cable industry, will also carry the coverage on C-SPAN.org as well as via the C-SPAN Radio app.

The court last week granted C-SPAN's request to cover the argument via a real-time audio feed. The court granted the request, made C-SPAN the pool feed, and said that other media could apply for access by 4 p.m. May 5 by filing a request at www.ca4.uscourts.gov/contact.

The Fourth Circuit regularly releases audio at the end of the day, but agreed to let C-sPAN and others take it live. C-SPAN will show the pictures of the judges and producers will try to identify which judge or lawyer is speaking when.

Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, which, like C-SPAN advocates for cameras and microhones in court, said of C-SPAN's successful petition: "Given the popularity of the Ninth Circuit's real-time audio feed for its February travel ban hearing - in which more than 135,000 people listened online and 1.5 million watched as CNN played the feed uninterrupted - I am confident that other courts will get with the times and begin to offer the same type of access for their most closely watched cases."


John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.