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Regional daily reporter overturns court Twitter ban

A regional daily reporter has overturned a ban on live tweeting updates from a court case he is covering.

An order was made barring the Coventry Telegraph’s Ben Eccleston from posting on the social networking site during the trial of Ian Neale at the city’s Magistrates Court yesterday afternoon.

Neale, the former chief executive of Nuneaton Town Football Club, is facing three counts of assault against a former director of the club and two security guards during a charity fundraising ball last September.

Ben had been posting live updates on the trial’s progression yesterday morning, but later wrote on the social networking site that an order was made banning the practice during the case.

Cov Ben

However he made representations on the matter when he returned to court this morning, and the ban has since been lifted.

Ben was told no application to tweet had been made to the court prior to the trial.

However in 2011 the Lord Chief Justice announced reporters would no longer have to make applications to use Twitter during court proceedings.

Ben told HTFP: “By the sound of it they’d been given the impression that potential witnesses or friends of witnesses had been reading the tweets, but it was a case of Chinese whispers.

“They’d been told that and it wasn’t the case at all.

“[The court] have been really good and accepted my representations straight away.”

18 comments

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  • January 28, 2015 at 8:04 am
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    I get that it’s the law, and I get the free speech thing etc but tweeting updates from court is utterly dull and ultimately pointless. Despite what the editor/reporter thinks, no-one is so interested in the story that they are waiting for updates every ten minutes. A tweet at the inevitable mid-morning/afternoon adjournment and one at lunch should surely suffice.

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  • January 28, 2015 at 9:30 am
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    Poacher is correct. Tweets are little more than an ego trip.

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  • January 28, 2015 at 9:51 am
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    If it were my town and local football club, this is exactly the kind of story I’d be following closely, hoping for updates every few minutes. Helen Pidd from the Guardian Northerner live tweeted the trial of the teenage boy who killed teacher Ann Maguire and it was fascinating. An excellent example of exactly how Twitter can be used by journalists.

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  • January 28, 2015 at 9:56 am
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    I’d have thought that most employers would have isues with members of staff who every few minutes take time off to check for Twitter posts about an event they are not even involved in.

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  • January 28, 2015 at 10:26 am
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    I used to be a journalist and the amount of times I got told to put my phone away and stop tweeting because it was against the law was ridiculous. Well done to the lad.

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  • January 28, 2015 at 10:26 am
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    Has everyone forgotten the live tweets from the John Terry racism court case? Some of them were incredible.

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  • January 28, 2015 at 11:31 am
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    Dear Kipper,

    You’re wrong. Poacher’s right.

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  • January 28, 2015 at 11:50 am
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    Kieran. I think the John Terry case was of rather more interest than this one, local yarn or not. On the plus side at least this paper had a reporter in court. So many rely on a follow-up press release from the cops for court coverage, especially those whose will not pay for freelances.
    And well done on challenging the court.

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  • January 28, 2015 at 11:52 am
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    Seriously Kipper is this case so riveting that people are waiting from the next twitter message from court. They were doing it during the Pistorius trial (slightly more interesting than this fairly routine case) and the volume of them became tedious and in many cases trivial.
    By the way, while the reporter is tweeting on any case, not just this one, is he or she concentrating on the evidence?
    A couple of tweets as Poacher suggests is fine with an extra one if there anything dramatic. Any more sounds like self indulgence (I have Twitter therefore I must!)

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  • January 28, 2015 at 12:09 pm
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    Whenever the word ‘twitter’ is mentioned, there’ll always be someone waiting to yodel on about how it kills journalism.

    How about recognising the fact that this is 2015 and, particularly in this case, THIS IS JOURNALISM!

    Well done Ben.

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  • January 28, 2015 at 12:55 pm
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    Hey Digsy… (can I call you that…)

    Well interesting point you make. But it’s the why that I cant see.
    Let’s picture a scene. A murder trial that’s gripped a community.
    Choice a) Tweet at lunchtime and end of the day
    Choice b) Tweet the case as it happened.
    It’s b for me every time…
    I can’t be the only person who followed Peter Jukes fantastic live tweeting of the hacking trial can i?

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  • January 28, 2015 at 1:39 pm
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    Kipper. That is the point. Save it for the really big stories. This isn’t one of them. I have Twitter so I must as someone else said. Do it, but don’t overdo it.

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  • January 28, 2015 at 2:13 pm
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    A couple of things about live tweeting:
    1. How is the reporter taking notes? You can’t type at the same speed as write. So how much is being missed? (Often found little details could be quite useful in backgrounders.)

    2. Social media is all very well, but how does this benefit the newspaper? I can see why it would benefit Twitter. I can see why it would benefit the reporter (more followers suggests understanding of social media – and to be fair I’ve looked at his tweets, they’re very good) but as a news organisation what’s it in for the paper? It doesn’t drive advertising or circulation.

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  • January 28, 2015 at 7:03 pm
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    Hello everyone – I am the reporter from this story. Has been very interesting reading all your comments.
    I can tell you that this story is of huge interest to many of our readers as the gentleman involved is a well-known figure. The number of retweets and replies I’ve had has been amazing today and shows that when the right case is chosen people are willing to read your tweets.
    As for people asking about keeping up with evidence and note-taking: I was sending my tweets out when I had the chance to do so (natural breaks in the proceedings).
    Also the thorough notes I’ve taken have been enough to write a piece of around 500/600 words on both days during the lunch adjournment and then a final piece immediately today after the verdict.

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