A brief altercation at a Charlestown Town Council meeting has put the spotlight on the practice of videotaping public meetings just as Rhode Island’s PBS television station, WSBE, is cutting back on its taping of local public meetings.

At a July 14 meeting, citizen volunteer Clifford Vanover’s video camera was allegedly shoved by Charlestown’s acting council president, James Mageau. Nobody was hurt, but Mr. Mageau faces assault charges. This flap will go its way but the larger issue of citizens taping public meetings should not go unaddressed.

Citizens should have the right to tape all public meetings (except, of course, for executive sessions). Meeting transcripts are often available too late to be useful to the public, and WSBE hasn’t the means to tape every meeting. Its willingness to make the effort, already constrained by finances, is likely to shrink further after the events in Charlestown.

WSBE also is cutting the number of public-access channels, which are funded by a 50-cent fee on most cable-TV bills. Cox once performed some of the public services now undertaken by WSBE. With Verizon now competing with Cox for cable customers, Cox has refused to let Verizon use Cox transmission lines for Verizon public access, though Cox inherited the lines.

“We had no idea how Cox’s backbone ran until Verizon came and tried to replicate what Cox was doing,” says David Piccerelli, of WSBE. It seems the bottom line trumps cooperation in helping the public use modern technology to track local public affairs.

Videotaping seems to be shifting from corporate and public hands to those of private citizens. That could make it more “subversive,” but that’s not necessarily bad, depending upon what is subverted — stodgy habits of public affairs just beyond reach of the actual public, for example.

“This is better than any circus I ever went to,” one resident said of a recent Charlestown council meeting. “I’m embarrassed I’m a resident of this town,” another resident said of the meeting.

To the extent that videotaping becomes institutionalized, public meetings should become less like an embarrassing circus and more like the forum of responsible public discourse that they ought to be. The new video lets people track public officials word by word and gesture by gesture very easily and inexpensively. It not only keeps officials on their toes; it enforces a degree of circumspection upon citizen activists.

Some politicians are afraid of looking like fools or illiterates over and over again with the push of a button. Let them tremble. Let them clean up their acts. Maybe that will encourage better people to seek leadership positions.