A judge rejected a CBC request to get videos from the Hyde inquiry yesterday, but media can use video of the videos.
Much of the inquiry has focused around the surveillance footage of Hyde being Tasered by police. The fatality inquiry into the death of Howard Hyde is streamed live daily at hydeinquiry.ca, and TV stations have so far had to use that web feed video for their newscasts.
However, CBC lawyer David Coles argued this was too low in quality and requested a DVD copy of surveillance footage to broadcast a better view of what happened.
But several parties, such as the NSGEU, Halifax Regional Police and the Attorney General of Nova Scotia, opposed the request. Ultimately, it was rejected by Judge Anne Derrick.
The conflict stemmed from Derrick’s July 6 decision that the DVD footage could not be uploaded to the Internet. She cited concerns about the privacy of those caught on tape and the potential for tampering once the video is online.
Coles argued some of these concerns were moot since the video was being shown in court and streamed to the Web. He said the CBC just wanted to provide better quality images.
But part of the request involved uploading some portions of the video to the CBC website, and Derrick found this conflicted with her earlier ruling. She also said there was no “entitlement” to give media and the public the same quality of evidence that is seen in court.
