Birmingham and Coventry National Union of Journalists

Must journalists attend court hearings to report accurately?

UK Human Rights Blog, May 17, 2011 by Adam Wagner

On the one hand, it would be onerous for journalists to spend their days at the courts in the hope of picking up something interesting to report on. This may even lead to them sexing up the cases they do happen to see in order to find a story. And hearings are not always open to the public.

On the other, this is what court reporters do and have done since the time of Dickens (in fact, Dickens was a court reporter in his youth). Hearings are sometimes closed to the public but they are mostly open. And it would be odd if football journalists suddenly stopped attending matches and instead relying on a post-match interview with one of the players to piece together their report. One would always assume the report would be unbalanced and inaccurate.

Read the full article here . . . .