The Lord Chief Justice has warned journalists that mis-reporting events in the courts can damage public confidence in the criminal justice system.

Lord Woolf said he sympathised with the journalists’ balancing act between reporting what they felt the public wanted to hear and the increasing burden of growing media laws and regulations.

Speaking at the launch of the new edition of McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists, he added that the courts faced a similar set of rules to comply with, and were also finding it difficult.

But he said: “If the reporter doesn’t understand the subject about which he is reporting then, of course, he will get it wrong, and that is particularly important in relation to what happens in the courts.

“This is a real concern of mine because it is my belief that mis-reporting what the courts do can undermine the confidence of the public in the courts, and if the courts do not have the confidence of the public, I am afraid it is much more difficult for them to do their job, which is to try to achieve justice for those who appear before them.

“This is particularly true in the field of criminal justice.

“I do worry about the reporting that takes place of the courts’ decisions in regard to crime.

“We are in fact – and this is something which all journalists who report courts need to know – being more punitive as judges than we have been probably ever before. We are sending people to prison for longer in relation to a greater variety of cases than ever before.

“But the message that comes through from the media regularly is one which indicates the opposite, and that is very worrying to me as a judge.

“What I am trying to indicate to you is the huge power which journalists have, and the importance of their exercising that power in a responsible manner.”

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