NEWSPAPER PRACTICE
– 256 candidates;
- 144 passed – 56 per cent

The examiners felt that overall, while there were candidates who answered individual questions well, there were fewer who produced outstanding performances for the whole paper.

Candidates should remember that time management on the NCE is crucial.

While part A carries 50 per cent of the marks, to truly do themselves justice candidates need to allow themselves enough time to give a full answer to the part B questions.

On many papers part A stretched to several pages, while part B answers were confined to half a page each.

Length of answer is obviously not the sole mark of excellence, but it is difficult for a candidate to score enough marks for a high pass with such short answers.

As with previous NCE papers, those who did best on part A questions were those candidates who showed an ability to apply their legal knowledge to the situation at hand.

The candidates are allowed to use McNae's and so merely copying out all the definitions of libel or the Contempt of Court Act will not attract many marks.

Part B answers ask for candidates to show clearly not only who they would speak to for a story, but what they would ask them.

Successful candidates showed not only a good list of contacts, but also a thorough and original line of questioning which left examiners in no doubt that they would produce good, readable copy for their paper.

Question 1 of part A was a piece of court copy.

The crucial element in this was the fact the defendant had pleaded guilty to some offences and not guilty to others.

The central item of any good answer was to check whether the jury had heard the guilty pleas and if not, whether a section 4 order had been made under the Contempt of Court Act 1981.

A disturbingly large number of candidates who answered this question failed to pick up on that issue.

Instead many focused on perceived libel problems as they believed a report of the prosecution opening was not balanced and therefore a defence of absolute privilege was lost because of a lack of fairness.

This error not only demonstrates an ignorance of the law, but also a lack of knowledge of basic court procedure and reporting.

A smaller number of candidates made the perennial error of claiming absolute privilege as a defence against contempt.

It is presumed that this is because absolute privilege uses the phrase 'fair, accurate and contemporaneous' as does S4 (1) of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 in its defence for court reporting.

Candidates contemplating resits ought to be clear on what defends the media against which legal problem.

Question 2 presented candidates with the difficulty of what to report in a situation where both libel and contempt dangers arose.

Candidates who fared poorly were those who insisted that police tip-offs had qualified privilege – they do not.

Equally the examiners were reluctant to award many marks to those who insisted nothing could be published at all.

Successful candidates spotted that a safe report would be one that carried a report of the raid, without naming the firm or any employees.

In Question 3 a number of candidates decided to go ahead and name the firm and the MD despite of the issue of the death threats being made against him, a decision that perhaps their editor ought to at least have a hand in.

In Question 4 candidates generally identified the correct institutional sources for the story.

Many made the assumption that the 'staff' were teachers when they could as easily have been support staff.

Successful candidates identified that it would be central to any coverage to try to track them down, usually through a union contact.

In Question 5 the best answers were those that not only did the obvious interviews of the team, parents, coaches and Outward Bound representatives, but went further to widen the story out to examine how such techniques could help others.

The question, after all, did ask for a feature, not a news story.

Pictorial support was also crucial to avoid the only illustration being a team line-up and candidates who considered this were rewarded accordingly.

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