NAVEED HAQ: TRU TV IN SEATTLE TO COVER TRIAL

Dan DeLong / P-I
Naveed Haq is led from the courtroom during a break in his trial at the King County Courthouse in Seattle on Wednesday. Haq is accused of entering the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle and opening fire, killing one woman, on July 28, 2006.

THOMAS JAMES HURST / THE SEATTLE TIMES
As Haq jurors deliberate, truTV producer Grace Wong monitors e-mails and news via her laptop and cellphone.

"In Session" TV crew puts Haq trial on national stage
By Natalie Singer
Seattle Times staff reporter

For six weeks they've been here every day. Starting at sunrise, leaving only to grab a soda or take a hurried bathroom break. Settling onto hard courtroom benches, they've heard every word of testimony and witnessed every objection and motion in Naveed Haq's trial.

They're not jurors. They're covering them.

They're allowed where local TV stations are not. The crew of television's "In Session," previously known as Court TV, has seen more than the jury. And because of them, the rest of the country has a front-row seat at one of King County's most high-profile criminal cases in years.

As the jury deliberates the fate of Haq, accused of the 2006 shootings at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, the people behind the "In Session" program — a cameraman on his feet six hours a day, the producer and the "booker" of interviews often glued to their cellphones, the expertly coifed and legally savvy correspondent — wait to bring the end of the story to their fans.

It's one of the few times the phenomenon, which boasts the slogan "Not Reality. Actuality," has broadcast a Seattle trial. It was most recently in Seattle to film the 2003 sentencing of Green River killer Gary L. Ridgway.

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The effort it takes to travel to courtrooms around the country — all with different systems, bureaucracy, facilities and attitudes toward television crews — is phenomenal, Sullivan said.

The program, which airs 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Eastern time, has five field producers, five researchers or "trial trackers," four anchors, three correspondents, two satellite trucks, an assignment desk in Washington, D.C., and a slew of associate producers — including three working on the Haq case.

READ MORE OF NATALIE SINGER'S PROFILE OF COURTROOM TELEVISION...

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