A regional daily has pulled its reporter off coverage of a court case after a judge refused to lift a gagging order.
The South Wales Argus has abandoned its coverage of a case of wilful neglect of a baby because it feels it cannot report the proceedings meaningfully.
It followed a judge’s refusal to lift a section 39 order preventing the identification of an 18-month-old baby which in turn prevented the paper from naming the defendants.
Editor Gerry Keighley says he is “fed-up” with arguing with judges over such cases, claiming the law is being applied “inconsistently.”
The case is being heard by Judge Stephen Hopkins at Cardiff Crown Court and concerned two defendants, a mother and her partner, accused of wilful neglect against a baby who had suffered a number of injuries when it was about six months old.
After the judge initially placed the order, Simon Westrop, head of legal for the Argus’s parent company Newsquest, wrote to him pointing out a number of previous cases in which judges had stated that babies cannot be harmed by publicity.
He also repeated guidance from the Judicial Studies Board and the Lord Chief Justice about the placing of section 39 orders.
Nevertheless Judge Hopkins refused to lift the order and said that in his view naming the parents would automatically lead to the baby being named.
Said Gerry: “Under those restrictions I felt there was no point in us being in court. I have written to the judge and told him that I believe the order and the guidance have prevented open justice being served.
“I have also said that if similar rulings are made in similar cases in future we will not report them.
“I am fed up with pleading with different judges over the years and quoting the same old precedents. I recognise the judges have discretion in their own courts, but there is little consistency.
“It’s the press on one side and the judges, barristers and social services on the other. It was especially galling in this case because the judge originally banned us from naming the defendants.
“When we pointed out that he couldn’t he removed that clause but then told us that in his view naming them would identify the child.
“I have no wish to identify children who are old enough to be harmed (possibly) by publicity, but it has been said time and again by senior judges that babies cannot be harmed by publicity.”
“I’ve fought lots of these cases over the years, but things don’t improve. I’m not wasting any more time or company money on similar cases.
“The Lord Chief Justice and the Judicial Studies Board should tell their judges that in some cases their orders are damaging open justice and giving people who injure children the protection of anonymity.”
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Well done Gerry. I know you have suffered this problem for many years. Such banning orders give guilty parents anonymity and who do readers blame when half a story appears in the paper? Not the judge! There is no consistency despite guidelines which I am convinced some judges either do not know about or do not read.
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Well done Gerry. I too am tired of pointing out the obvious in cases like these. The same needs to be done in magistrates court because so many magistrates (and solicitors) don’t know their arse from their elbow when it comes to section 39, section 11 or section 4 (Contempt) order media restrictions and just slap them on “to be safe”.
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Was the baby removed from the defendents? Chances are with a case of wilful neglect the child will be taken into care and may eventually be adopted – in which case it is hard to see that naming the parent and partner would have any detrimental effect on the child. Reporting cases without identifying the individuals destroys the news value for local papers and can lead to readers falsely ‘identifying’ other innocent parties as being involved.
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We’ve come up against the same brick wall on several occasions. Sometimes we win, sometimes we don’t. We even had a Sec 39 banning us from naming the 13-year-old daughter of a murder victim during the trial when in the the months after the murder happened we’d named and photographed her and run an appeal to take her on holiday. I’d be interested to see the reply you get from the judge.
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It is absolutely shocking that judges seem to have no real understanding of the laws relating to reporting of cases. A couple of years ago, I covered a case of child abuse which had been brought when the victims were all adults. They were all anonymous because they were victims of sexual offences – but the judge stuck a s39 on the victims anyway, who were in their 20s. It’s ridiculous.
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the whole point of press reporting court is to name criminals to deter people from crime. To be fair though, I did get a fair hearing from crown court judge who banned me from reporting the defendant’s name in a child sex case and later accepted my argument in court that the law already protected the child against being identified without an order. But that case proved so difficult to report without Id-ing the boy we gave up on the re-trial. It is a nightmare and it is true that the child is more important than the story.
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