When Steve Brill founded Court TV, the idea of law as entertainment was somewhat novel. Sure, there have been tons of law shows on the tube, from Perry Mason to LA Law to some weird show about a law firm with one bathroom and a dancing baby. But they were fiction. Court TV was going to bring the real thing to the people so they could see how the sausage of law was made. Toss in some explanatory commentary by “experts” and how could it miss?

Of course, Court TV is gone now. There were a couple problems with the concept. One was that trials are boring. For every 30 seconds of high drama, there were 30 hours of tedious groundwork laid. Another thing is that there really aren’t that many cases that the public cares about. O.J. doesn’t happen every day. And finally, it takes a lot of time to watch a trial. Unlike a drama, the trial doesn’t start and end in an hour and you don’t usually get to see a video of the actual crime right before the verdict is returned.

Brill argues that the trials of Trump change all that.

In the work I do looking at the reliability of online news and information, I can see that the erosion of trust in basic facts is largely the result of too many people getting their news from social media platforms. What they see there may be highly opinionated, one-sided, boiled down to a few words or catchy phrases, or taken out of context, come from people with undisclosed credentials or agendas, or be just plain made up. And it’s all sorted out and presented by algorithms designed to engage them to spend more time on the platform by offering up content that will excite rather than inform, and please them rather than challenge them, by reinforcing what they already believe.

In our interesting times, we learn only as much as our viewing choice tell us, and whether we watch Newsmax or MSNBC, we learn only what we’re told to learn. Worse still, we’re reliably assured by “former prosecutors” (it’s always former prosecutors because they are the easiest to sell to the public as bona fide “experts”) that whatever they tell us about the law is trustworthy. After all, would former prosecutors lie to you?

What’s presented to jurors in a courtroom has the opposite qualities. Court is a quiet, somber sanctuary, where rules prevent the disorienting chaos we experience online. Jurors are made aware of the credentials and possible biases of witnesses. Documents and other exhibits are painstakingly authenticated. The admissibility of evidence is carefully vetted by a judge, and after a lawyer on one side is allowed to present it, a lawyer on the other side can then challenge it, with both lawyers strictly limited by rules not allowing them to present hearsay or rumors or offer their opinions.

Rather than rely on being told what happened and what its significance is, Brill asserts that going right to the source, the actual trial itself, will enable people to see with their own eyes, to think with their own minds, about a trial of extreme importance. The trial of the United States v. Donald J. Trump. Of all the trials Americans need to see, this one stands alone. But is it even possible?

Federal court rules do not allow cameras in any criminal trials. However, no matter which side of this Donald Trump case you may be rooting for, you should want those rules to be suspended so that this trial can be televised live.

I’ve long been against cameras in the courtroom for numerous reasons. Cameras change the dynamics in the courtroom, from preening lawyers to scared witnesses to judges doing their best Lance Ito impression. But even more importantly, seeing a trial without the foundational legal knowledge to understand what you’re watching gives rise to a huge problem. People believe they know what happened because they see it with their own eyes, except they often haven’t a clue what they’ve just seen because they haven’t a clue why an objection is sustained, a piece of evidence admitted while another is suppressed.

Even with lawyers giving running commentary about what’s happening in the courtroom, there is no assurance that the lawyers aren’t spinning it one way or another. There aren’t too many “honest brokers” out there anymore, as almost everyone they put on air has a view to sell.

The last thing our country and the world needs is for this trial to become the ultimate divisive spin game, in which each side roots for its team online and on the cable news networks as if cheering from the bleachers. Much of that would still happen, but imagine how a quiet, methodical, but sure-to-be-riveting presentation of both sides’ arguments — subject to the rules of evidence and decorum of a federal court, not the algorithms of Facebook and Twitter — might temper the national mood when a verdict is announced. At the least, it will make people more informed about what could be the single most important activity their government will conduct in their lifetimes.

Brill isn’t wrong. Indeed, to the extent his Court TV network was intended to be an entertainment juggernaut that would make him oodles of money, it did democratize law to some extent. And he’s not wrong that the trial of Trump is going to be hugely significant to the public. Maybe his sycophants will ignore the evidence and wrap themselves up in “but it’s all political” rather than accept that he committed crimes if that’s what the evidence proves, but the vast majority of Americans who are neither dedicated to loving or loathing Trump will be able to know with some degree of certainty that Trump is a criminal unfit for office. Or will they just be the victims of whatever spin the talking heads on their favorite cable channel puts on it?

But even if we want it to happen, can it?

Suspending the rule against cameras in federal criminal trials will not be easy. In fact, it requires suspending three rules. First, the U.S. Judicial Conference, chaired by the Supreme Court’s chief justice, John Roberts, and consisting of the chief judges from each of the country’s appellate circuits and the Court of International Trade and trial judges from each of those circuits, would have to vote to suspend its nationwide rule against cameras in federal criminal trials. The judicial council of the District of Columbia Circuit has its own rule, which would then have to be suspended. And then the federal rules of criminal procedure, which also prohibit cameras, would have to be changed.

It would take a good deal of effort to make the changes needed to create an exception this one time, but if the will is there, it could be done. The problem is that the same debate over whether this is beneficial or deleterious to the public understanding of what they’re seeing will happen, ad nauseam, because that’s how every argument goes these days, constantly spinning in circles never to be resolved as no one is ever willing to accept that a decision must be made and sometimes it won’t be the decision they want.