Jonah,

You make a great point about using duplicates. This is an issue that comes up all the time in litigation — over matters that are a lot more trivial than a major news network transparently trying to impact a presidential election. It’s covered by rules 1002 through 1004 of the Federal Rules of Evidence. Presumptively, if you seek to prove “the content of a writing . . . the original writing . . . is required.” It’s true that copies are used all the time in court, but that’s because there is usually no real dispute that an original exists and the copy is authentic. When there is such a dispute, the rule is that copies may only be used if (a) the original is lost or destroyed, (b) production of the original cannot be compelled by judicial process (e.g., if it’s in a country with which we don’t have a mutual assistance treaty), (c) the original is in the possession of the adversary party in the litigation and that adversary refuses to turn it over, or (d) the matter a party wants to use the copy to prove is of only collateral, rather than central, importance to the issue at hand. Copies, furthermore, are not admissible if a “genuine question is raised as to the authenticity of the original.”

These are common sense rules. Basically, a fact-finding process that has any integrity does not render conclusions based on copies when there are colorable reasons to question them.