Three media organisations have been convicted of contempt of court for publishing photographs of a footballer during his trial for alleged assault and breach of the peace at an Edinburgh pub.

Scottish Television, the Daily Record and the Scottish Sun newspapers were each fined £1,750 earlier this month over a photograph of Celtic’s Derek Riordan.

Identification was an important issue in the trial, and Riordan’s photograph was published before the first witness had completed his evidence and prior to a second witness starting his.

Riordan was subsequently acquitted, but in convicting and fining the news organisations for contempt, Sheriff Allan said publication of the photograph created a substantial risk that the course of justice in the trial would be seriously impeded or prejudiced.

The news reports, accompanied by the photograph, included information that an alleged victim had purported to identify the accused in the courtroom dock.

Sheriff Allan rejected the media organisations’ defence that Riordan was famous and widely known in the city such that publication of his photograph could not possibly prejudice identification by the trial witnesses. It transpired that neither of the two relevant witnesses had previously heard of Riordan.

Sheriff Allan said: “If, as turned out to be the case here, neither of the two civilian witnesses knew or were ever aware of having previously seen or heard of Derek Riordan, the risk of prejudice or impediment to the course of justice was substantial.”

He added that the important thing was not the actual outcome, but the risk that the course of justice would be seriously impeded or prejudiced. That is a point made by judges in previous contempt cases.

An appeal is anticipated.

Also north of the border, legal aid is now available for certain libel cases in Scotland following a change of stance by the Scottish Legal Aid Board. However, it will only be available in exceptional circumstances where a case involves a wide public interest or is of overwhelming importance to a particular person.

In other developments, the Press Complaints Commission has criticised a “significant breach of the Code” by FHM after the mens magazine inadvertently published a topless photograph of a 14-year-old girl, thinking that she was older and had consented.

FHM had been informed the image was a mobile phone snapshot sent in by the girl’s cohabiting partner and, on that basis, made no further enquiries before publication. It had since introduced measures to prevent any recurrence of the situation.

Finding a serious breach of Clause 3 (Privacy) and Clause 6 (Children), the PCC said the magazine “had clearly not taken any sort of adequate care to establish the provenance of the photograph and whether it was right to publish it”.

Meanwhile, Google News has reportedly struck copyright licensing deals with a number of major news agencies including Press Association and Associated Press.

And speculation continues over whether the Government has plans to release a consultation paper on the possibility of extending the law of defamation to the dead, in particular to protect the reputations of victims of homicide offences.

Solicitor Nigel Hanson is a member of Foot Anstey’s media team.