A judge has issued a stark warning to a small Scottish weekly over its court reporting which she claimed had “drifted into fiction.”

Judge Rita Rae QC, at Glasgow’s High Court of Justiciary, hit out after prosecutors drew her attention to reports in The Digger, a weekly newspaper with a circulation of about 11,000 edited and run by journalist James Cruickshank.

The coverage in question was of the trial of a man and a woman in connection with the death of a vulnerable woman who was tortured, then drowned.

Attempts were made to conceal the evidence by starting a fire, reports Media Lawyer.

James Meiklem was convicted of murdering Jannette Cooper and conspiring with his girlfriend, Karen MacFadden, to pervert the course of justice by starting the fire to cover up the crime.

The issue of a possible contempt in The Digger’s reporting of the trial was dealt with at a hearing last month after the defendants were sentenced. Judge Rae said there were concerns about a number of issues.

One was that The Digger had, while the trial was still going on, reported a submission made by the defence in the absence of the jury that there was no case to answer. The court itself had not made an order postponing reports of the submissions until the end of the trial.

Others included inaccuracies in reports, particularly about the cause of Ms Cooper’s death, details about telephone calls mentioned in evidence and what appeared to be an attack on an expert witness from a social care project for women with drug or alcohol problems.

It emerged during the hearing that Mr Cruickshank had compiled his reports from information noted at court by two women, one of whom had no previous journalistic experience.

Solicitors representing Mr Cruickshank and The Digger stated that he had not been given a specific list of problems or alleged inaccuracies in the publication’s reports.

Counsel for the two women who had submitted the information after attending court also argued that they were not in fact certain of the complaints being made by the Crown.

Judge Rae said it was clear from editions of The Digger published in February that it had incorrectly reported the cause of death and had been inaccurate in other respects.

The Digger “seemed at times to drift into fiction-writing”, she said. There was serious misreporting of the cause of death, which was an issue at the trial, and no evidence that the victim had been stabbed to death in a bath, as the publication had claimed.

The attack on the expert witness was the most disturbing factor, she said. Unfair criticism of witnesses could have an effect on the administration of justice as it could impact on the willingness of members of the public to give evidence.

The judge concluded there was no evidence of disruption to the administration of justice, so, after considerable thought, she had decided not to take the issue any further.

Judge Rae said she was issuing a public warning – The Digger and Mr Cruickshank would be at serious risk of a contempt finding if they were inaccurate in future.

She would also be raising the case with her judicial colleagues so that they were aware of The Digger and of the warning those concerned had been given in open court.