Magistrates should be stripped of their right to impose court reporting restrictions, according to a journalist and media law trainer.
David Banks, pictured left, who co-wrote three past editions of McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists, has made the case for justices of the peace to be banned from the practice – arguing instead the responsibility should lie solely with district judges and higher powers.
Writing in the New Statesman, David cited examples of a series of cases where reporting restriction orders had been misused.
They included a court unlawfully placing a Section 39 anonymity order on the children of a woman accused of murder even though they weren’t involved in proceedings, the same order being used in relation to a dead child, a court refusing to allow a sexual offence victim to waive her anonymity in breech of Article 10 of the Human Rights Act and a magistrate refusing to give her name to reporters covering a case.
David claimed JPs are often swayed “too easily” by defence representatives to impose orders illegally.
He wrote: “(Magistrates) need to be stripped of the ability to interfere with the reporting of the courts, because, to put it bluntly, many of them have not got the first idea of what they are doing.”
David, who gives media law training to Trinity Mirror editorial staff, added: “These orders can severely hamper the open reporting of the courts and as so often has been stated in the past, justice unreported is no justice at all.
“So these powers should be removed from lay magistrates and placed instead in the hands of a district judge or higher, so that proper legal argument can take place.
“This would still not be perfect – district judges and those in crown court are capable of making daft orders on occasion, but are generally more open to persuasion otherwise if they can be shown case law or statute contradicting them.
“The courts are woefully under-reported these days and they should be making every effort to be more open and accommodating to those who would inform the public of what goes on there.
“Making unlawful orders that close down coverage does nothing to help.”
David’s full piece can be read here.
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I totally agree with David. Our magistrates make a S 39 order on every single under-18 involved in every single case without even considering any alternative. I do sometimes object as a matter of principle (often we’d never name the child anyway as it wouldn’t be necessary / their identity is not relevant to our reporting) but it does get tedious. They even impose a S39 when the child is a sexual offence victim which is just a waste of their time because the law already affords the child anonymity.
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Often the JPs don’t seem to realise how all embracing a S39 is. They seem to think it just covers the child’s name and forget that it is anything that might lead to identification. You wonder if they realise how that can make it difficult, or even impossible, to report serious cases which would be in the public interest.
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