Court curbs needed to protect us from Twitter fools

New court-reporting restrictions are necessary to ensure justice is conducted properly – and to protect the rights of citizens from some fool with a Twitter handle

TO TWEET or not to tweet? That is the question.

The answer coming from Chief Justice Frank Clarke is unequivocal – when in court, and you’re not a reporter or a lawyer, don’t even think about it.

The news that a fresh batch of regulations will be introduced into the Irish courts system from November 26 has provoked a paroxysm of outrage from some quarters, and while the knee-jerk, reflexive opposition to the moves may be inevitable, they don’t really stand up to rational scrutiny.

Chief Justice Clarke’s new ruling will prohibit members of the public from tweeting or engaging in any other forms of social media while they are in a court room and, frankly, many people probably thought that was already the case.

But as ever with the rapidly changing and constantly evolving nature of social media the law, ponderous beast that it is, has remained firmly two steps behind digital technology and how best to accommodate the new tools in a modern legal environment.

According to Clarke, tweeting, texting and other forms of live social media updates from court cases will be strictly confined to working journalists and lawyers, while all other people attending a court sitting will be banned from using smart phones, laptops and other devices capable of accessing social media.

In many ways, it’s hard to know if the furious opposition to the new guidelines is based on the idea of citizens not being able to inform their followers what they are witnessing in the court room, or whether it’s motivated by resentment at the fact that journalists and lawyers – two groups of people who aren’t exactly cherished by much of the population – are permitted to do something that is denied to the ordinary punter. Paul Murphy TD was quick out of the blocks with his condemnation of the move, bizarrely characterising it as an attempt “to shore up the position of the mainstream media as the gatekeepers of information from the courts. It contravenes the administration of justice in public”.

Actually, and one would normally expect a sitting TD to know this, it does no such thing.

In fact, with the exception of family law cases, and other trials involving a minor, or other rare occurrences, the courts are open to anyone who wants to attend.

It is a democratic right which we all enjoy and whether people choose to avail of that right or not is entirely immaterial – the public, contrary to Murphy’s paranoia, are perfectly entitled to see the wheels of justice in action.

What they are not entitled to do, however, is to throw a stick into those wheels with prejudicial tweets which may be seen by members of a jury.

One would have thought, frankly, that such a position is screamingly obvious. Similarly, the idea of the judiciary and journalists colluding together to “shore up the position of the mainstream media” may fit in with his vaguely defined anti-establishment world view, but such an idea is simply ludicrous.

After all, the judiciary and the media usually co-exist in a very uneasy state of mutual apprehension and while some judges are slightly more amenable to court reporters than others, every hack who works the court beat knows that half the judges they encounter wouldn’t hesitate to jail them for contempt.

Of all the specialised fields of journalism, court reporting is the most fraught and the most complex.

It takes a particular skill set, honed through years of often bitter experience, to become adept at knowing what you can

The people who spend their day angrily fulminating on Twitter may think they’re fulfilling some role, but they’re a menace

and what you can’t write or say.

That has nothing to do with journalists and judges working together in some sort of elitist, exclusionary manner to keep the little people out of the picture.

It is simply the reality of court life – lives are on the line and one badly worded sentence, or even an inadvertent piece of reportage that breaches restrictions, can result in the collapse of a trial and the denial of prompt justice to the people involved, be they guilty or innocent.

Of course, it was probably inevitable that the rabble-rousing Murphy would take this stance. Although one may have thought that his role in the Jobstown case, and the often wildly inaccurate and defamatory posts which were a feature of that trial were a major factor in introducing these new rules, would have taught him to be a bit more reticent.

Ray Byrne, commissioner of the Law Reform Commission, warned that people who use social media to break reporting restrictions could end up in jail for their troubles, and added, for good measure: “If someone says that someone is completely innocent and they post that on social media, that could be prejudicial to the outcome of the case...equally, if they say the person is definitely guilty, then that could also be regarded as a clear contempt of court. It is important, particularly in a very sensitive trial, where judges impose reporting restrictions for journalists who are in court, that they know those restrictions are in place. Not everybody knows about that.”

Like a lot of things in life, that seems perfectly obvious and fair. Equally, like a lot of things in life, the usual suspects aren’t happy about it. As is its wont, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties completely missed the point but was quick to express its disapproval, saying: “Defining who is and isn’t a bona fide journalist could be difficult, particularly when considering the active and important role of citizen journalists.”

Actually, it’s not difficult at all – ‘bona fide’ journalists are accredited and employed by a recognised media outlet. The copy they file is then processed through a layer of sub-editors, editors and, crucially, lawyers who ensure that nothing in breach of any restrictions ever hits the page.

It’s a rigorous, frequently onerous process, which can be the bane of a court reporter’s existence – but that frequently frustrating experience is also a lot better than collapsing a trial.

‘Citizen journalists’ on the other hand may indeed be citizens, but they’re not journalists.

Simply typing some words on your phone and releasing them to your Twitter feed does not make you a journalist. It makes you, at best, a concerned citizen and, at worst, an amateur who can wreck an entire case.

Court reporting, by its own inherently sensitive nature, is an almost forensic procedure which involves more rules and potential pitfalls than other areas of journalism. It’s a frequently perilous legal tightrope which takes a particular skill set and expertise to master fully.

The people who spend their day angrily fulminating on Twitter may think they’re fulfilling some role, but they’re a menace.

After all, these rules haven’t been designed to cosset some gilded inner circle, but to protect ordinary citizens from having their right to justice denied by some fool with a Twitter handle.