The importance of cameras in courtrooms is underlined in today's New York Daily News column by Bill Hammond.

Hammond repports on what the public missed - and should have been allowed to see and hear - in the courtroom last week when former state Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno was sentenced.

Moreover, he notes that a camera actually did capture the proceedings for those in an auxiliary courtroom, but that the images and sound were not allowed to escape the federal courthouse in Albany. In other words, while the cameras didn't interfere with the court action, as oppponents of cameras in courts typically warn, the public was kept in the dark until after the gavel, when print and broadcast media scurried to report the news.

Read the full column here.