Activists disrupt the justice process

Activity around the rape case highlights the ever-widening gulf between the mainstream media and those who purport to be journalists.

Twice the Canterbury Crown Court building was visited by far-right activists – Jayda Fransen of Britain First and Tommy Robinson, founder of the English Defence League.

In each case the activists carried microphones and were accompanied by a film crew with the intention of confronting defendants while the trial was ongoing – effectively convicting them before the jury had a chance to hear all the evidence and make its own mind up.

Britain First produced a report mid-trial in which Fransen yells at one of the defendants as he talks to his barrister outside the building in Chaucer Road. She later visits his former home on the city’s Hales Place Estate where she shouts at him through the window.

Robinson, who says he works for right-wing website The Rebel, was denied an opportunity to confront the men when police escorted them out.

That the jury eventually returned guilty verdicts on all four men is not the point. These were potentially destructive interruptions of the judicial process. The actions could have provoked a total collapse of the case on the basis that the defendants could not get a fair trial – or it could have involved a retrial, meaning the 16-year-old victim would have had to give her evidence a second time.

The mainstream media abides by the law and plays a serious role in ensuring that justice is done and seen to be done.