UK court reporting is changing: seven ways this impacts your newsroom

Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey

Credit: Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey by Stephen Richards, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

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The University of Salford convened a Journalism and the Courts Symposium last week and it revealed a profession under pressure, with court reporting facing unprecedented challenges from social media disruption, lesser-known reporting restrictions, and technological change.

One aspect is unchanged however, court reporting remains vital to both democracy and justice. Journalism.co.uk sums up what your newsroom needs to know.

Laptops are the new courtroom

Veteran court reporter Sian Harrison is perhaps best known to journalism students as the co-author of McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists, the bible for media law training.

She noted that changes in the legal system are historically slow, like "trying to turn a tank". However, technological shifts in court reporting and the open justice system in recent years have forced change. The pandemic was a revolutionary time for the courts with the introduction of remote hearings.

More technological change is impending with the emergence of generative AI, potentially helping to produce court reports for resource-sparse newsrooms. However, the need for humans in court reporting can never truly go away. Journalists can make the difference when reporting on people "at their worst moments" or overturning inappropriate reporting restrictions.

Key case: Babita Rai, 24, was accused of killing her infant daughter behind a tree in a park in Aldershot, Hampshire, in May 2017. PA successfully fought off an appeal to ban reporting on her address (initially spotted by then-PA law reporter Sam Tobin), which would have set a "dangerous precedent" for open justice and the media.

So what? Newsrooms must continue developing, and supporting, a pipeline of court reporters in a specialism that has considerable risks to mental health and isolation, as hybrid remote and in-person hearings become more commonplace.

Judge, jury and TV audiences

Cameras crept also into crown courts in 2022 with a promise from then-Justice Secretary Dominic Raab that filming judge remarks during the final stage of criminal prosecutions would "improve transparency" and help the public "understand better the complex decisions judges make." Three years on, Sally Reardon from the University of the West of England has been tracking whether that promise holds up. The numbers tell a mixed story.

Key research: In the first year, 33 cases were filmed from 36 requests. The BBC has used just 3.5 minutes of footage total in that year. By year three, that had risen to 43 cases - still a tiny fraction of Crown Court proceedings - and following predictable news values: 95 per cent involve someone dying or being murdered, on the extremes of being very young or old. Sexual offenses only get filmed when authority figures are involved, and there's a heavy skew toward "stranger danger" cases that don't reflect real-world crime patterns.

That was until the high-profile case of convicted baby killer nurse Lucy Letby, who was sentenced last year but her case is subject to review. The final remarks of British Judge, James Goss, reverberated across the nation and made for excellent soundbites and headlines.

There have been other stand-out moments, notably the high-profile sentencing of Southport killer Axel Rudakubana earlier this year. Indeed, the Southport riots last year provided a shift of their own, with 28 cases televised across England and Wales, representing lower-level offenses like criminal damage and racist social media posts.

So what? Demand for this content is increasing, both for news organisations and audiences. Currently only four news organisations can request to film (BBC, ITN, Sky and Press Association). Reardon calls for filmed coverage to be deposited in a central court channel.

The destruction of justice

The necessity of court reporting was made plainly obvious by a shocking revelation from Brian Thornton, lecturer at University of Winchester. Since 2011, court transcripts are destroyed after just seven years, leaving those challenging wrongful convictions entirely dependent on news reports.

Other barriers exist: a 2014 Supreme Court case made accessing physical evidence nearly impossible, and legal aid is virtually non-existent post-conviction.

Key research: The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) - an independent body that investigates miscarriages of justice - has a rejection rate of 98.5 per cent. It received a record 1,629 applications last year but referred only 25 cases to appeal.

In the US, defendants receive full court transcripts for free. But in the UK, these are charged for. MP David Davis was initially quoted £100,000 for full Lucy Letby trial transcripts, but got it reduced to £9,000, below the typical range of £10,000 - £20,000. This is unaffordable for the majority of victims or families who may want these records for personal reasons.

These ridiculous costs have stopped us from getting the full transcript of Lucy Letby's trial.

Instead, we have daily reports and live tweets for every single day of the trial.

This amounts to more than 700 pages.

But even so, it is not as good as a full transcript.

— David Davis MP (@DavidDavisMP) September 12, 2024

Impact on newsrooms: Court reporters unknowingly serve as the final guardians of justice records, making accurate, detailed reporting even more crucial than previously understood.

The system is far from perfect

When an 80-year-old South Asian pensioner was kicked to death by a teenager who filmed the attack while using racial slurs, the judge ruled it wasn't racially motivated.

Barnie Choudhury, editor-at-large, Eastern Eye newspaper, says even senior judges can reach questionable conclusions, whether through legal constraints or flawed reasoning.

He has received leaked documents that reveal how judges are taught to blackball promotion candidates without getting caught - essentially a manual for intentional bias disguised as merit-based decisions.

Key story: His reporting has also helped judge Claire Gilham - who won a six-year legal battle proving judicial discrimination - gain her rightful place on the whistleblowing committee. Judges have since formed their first union, acknowledging they need protection from their own system.

So what? Judges aren't infallible, and some are actively biased. Choudhury's work shows that persistent scrutiny can expose both innocent errors and deliberate misconduct within the judiciary.

Collateral damage in court reporting

New research from Liverpool John Moores University - presented by head of journalism Frances Yeoman and lecturer Tom McCooey - examined how court coverage affects the children and families of defendants - a group that represents hundreds of thousands of people across the country - in partnership with Time Matters.

Key research: A content analysis of 186 court reports over three weeks found general restraint in reporting practices across the largest free-to-access national titles (Mail Online, The Sun, and Reach plc-owned regionals). No full addresses were published, and family photos only appeared when relatives were victims. However, 128 reports included some form of address (but never house number) and 32 mentioned parental status like "mum of five."

The human impact tells a different story. Focus groups with affected children revealed they see court reporting as deliberately making their lives worse. They view address publication not as defamation protection (as is the purpose of it) but as making them vulnerable at home. References to parental status feel like being dragged unnecessarily into their parent's shame. Most concerning is the digital permanence - one young woman reported employers googling her name and finding coverage of her family's crimes years later.

So what? The research highlights a tension between open justice principles and unintended harm to innocent family members. Professional court reporting can be the "best bulwark" against inaccurate social media coverage - but only if affected families understand and trust the process. Newsrooms should consider whether current practices around addresses and parental status serve their intended purpose while minimising harm to those caught in the crossfire.

"The restriction creep" in specialist court

The Court of Protection came into force in 2007 as a closed-door hearing venue for vulnerable people without the capacity to make life decisions, i.e. those with learning difficulties, dementia and so on.

The lack of transparency on how these operated made them controversial, but reforms since 2016 and a global pandemic have ushered in public observations and transparency orders (TOs) to state what can and cannot be reported on, typically personal identification (except professionals) extending to their families, too.

Out of 32 hearings in a two-month window last year, all of them had a TO, found Amanda Hill, a lawyer and PhD student at Cardiff University, and one of five people involved with the Open Justice Court of Protection project.

Key research: A quarter of orders unnecessarily prevented naming healthcare professionals involved in cases, with one extending restrictions to professionals' families. More concerning, 28 per cent wrongly prevented identification of public bodies like local authorities or NHS Trusts, while 22 per cent accidentally included confidential information about the people they were meant to protect.

Key case: In one of the few cases where news organisations have overturned a TO, Sky News and BBC News successfully applied to publish Tony Hickmott's name when he was discharged from hospital after a 20-year battle for him to return home, arguing his story had already been widely reported in the public domain, that media reporting had previously helped relocate him and that reporting restrictions violated freedom of expression rights.

So what? Families are left unable to tell their stories publicly even when they want to highlight problems with the system. Newsrooms should recognise that Court of Protection cases affect hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people and their families, but current reporting restrictions may be unnecessarily broad and poorly implemented.

The social media Wild West

Court reporters face a peculiar modern problem: while they're bound by strict contempt laws, social media users post "with reckless abandon" about ongoing cases, forcing journalists into an exhausting game of digital whack-a-mole.

The Southport murders highlighted the problem perfectly. The "information vacuum" created by contempt laws was filled by speculation and misinformation on social media, contributing to widespread disorder. Yet prosecutions remain rare.

Rachel Howarth, journalism lecturer at the University of Salford, has been interviewing working journalists about this mounting pressure.

Key case: During the trial of Rocky Marciano Price for Lindsay Burbeck's murder, police were monitoring regional news websites. When someone attended court, learned the 16-year-old defendant's name, and posted it in comments, police called the editor within 30 seconds demanding removal.

The impact on engagement is severe - court reporters get significantly fewer page views than colleagues covering live news because they often have to disable comments entirely.

The 2021 Attorney General campaign #BeforeYouPost aimed to deter people from creating social media posts that could prejudice a fair trial. It lasted just five days with no published results, a damning indictment of the education challenge in front of the news sector.

You might be in contempt of court if you speak publicly or post on social media about an ongoing investigation or court case. More info on our website #ContemptOfCourt #ThinkBeforeYouPost https://t.co/9FrjAL2I2j pic.twitter.com/4ewLDAueyu

— Attorney General's Office (@attorneygeneral) March 15, 2021

So what? Newsrooms need to recognise that their court reporters are effectively policing public behavior online while competing with unrestricted social media content. The Law Commission is reviewing the system, but until social media platforms or courts develop better enforcement mechanisms, court reporting will continue operating at a significant disadvantage in the digital attention economy.

Check out the afternoon sessions for more on:

• How regional papers are making crime pay with Liverpool Echo, Manchester Evening News, Yorkshire Evening Post, National World, Newsquest and more
• Preparing journalism students for the realities of reporting on murder, rape and child abuse
• Reporting the Courts, a new book by Richard Jones, director of journalism, politics and contemporary history, University of Salford

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We used Claude AI to help draft, summarise and structure this article before it was edited and verified by a human

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