Journalism.co.uk
Court reporting is under siege from social media chaos, expanding restrictions, and new technological strides, finds the Journalism and the Courts Symposium
The University of Salford convened a Journalism and the Courts Symposium last week and it revealed a profession under pressure, with court reporting facing unprecedented challenges from social media disruption, lesser-known reporting restrictions, and technological change.
One aspect is unchanged however, court reporting remains vital to both democracy and justice. Journalism.co.uk sums up what your newsroom needs to know.
Laptops are the new courtroom
Veteran court reporter Sian Harrison is perhaps best known to journalism students as the co-author of McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists, the bible for media law training.
She noted that changes in the legal system are historically slow, like “trying to turn a tank”. However, technological shifts in court reporting and the open justice system in recent years have forced change. The pandemic was a revolutionary time for the courts with the introduction of remote hearings.
More technological change is impending with the emergence of generative AI, potentially helping to produce court reports for resource-sparse newsrooms. However, the need for humans in court reporting can never truly go away. Journalists can make the difference when reporting on people “at their worst moments” or overturning inappropriate reporting restrictions.
Key case: Babita Rai, 24, was accused of killing her infant daughter behind a tree in a park in Aldershot, Hampshire, in May 2017. PA successfully fought off an appeal to ban reporting on her address (initially spotted by then-PA law reporter Sam Tobin), which would have set a “dangerous precedent” for open justice and the media.
So what? Newsrooms must continue developing, and supporting, a pipeline of court reporters in a specialism that has considerable risks to mental health and isolation, as hybrid remote and in-person hearings become more commonplace.
Judge, jury and TV audiences
Cameras crept also into crown courts in 2022 with a promise from then-Justice Secretary Dominic Raab that filming judge remarks during the final stage of criminal prosecutions would “improve transparency” and help the public “understand better the complex decisions judges make.” Three years on, Sally Reardon from the University of the West of England has been tracking whether that promise holds up. The numbers tell a mixed story.
Key research: In the first year, 33 cases were filmed from 36 requests. The BBC has used just 3.5 minutes of footage total in that year. By year three, that had risen to 43 cases – still a tiny fraction of Crown Court proceedings – and following predictable news values: 95 per cent involve someone dying or being murdered, on the extremes of being very young or old. Sexual offenses only get filmed when authority figures are involved, and there’s a heavy skew toward “stranger danger” cases that don’t reflect real-world crime patterns.
That was until the high-profile case of convicted baby killer nurse Lucy Letby, who was sentenced last year but her case is subject to review. The final remarks of British Judge, James Goss, reverberated across the nation and made for excellent soundbites and headlines.
Read the full article at
https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/court-reporting-is-at-a-crossroads/s2/a1257691/
