It is criminal: The state of magistrates’ court reporting in England and Wales

Abstract

There is a widespread perception that there has been a collapse in court reporting in England and Wales as local legacy media struggles to survive in times of falling revenues and shifting audiences. However, there is little empirical evidence with which to examine the issue. This research aims to fill this knowledge gap by carrying out the first week-long systematic coding of the activity of one England and Wales magistrates’ court coupled with a concurrent survey of local media coverage of the courts. While 240 cases were observed during the week-long study, only three stories appeared in the local press and only one case was attended by a journalist. Moreover, the research team identified a significant number of ‘newsworthy’ cases among the sample – all of which were missing from media coverage. Although small in scale, this research does indicate that, in an average week, the vast majority of cases heard at this level of the criminal justice system is largely invisible to the public, with virtually no independent oversight from journalism. This is at odds with the key principle of open justice. The article ends with some suggestions for regenerating the area by shifting from court reporting to a Justice Reporting model, with the ultimate aim of effectively filling the void in external scrutiny of day-to-day criminal justice.

“It’s the Best Job on the Paper” – The Courts Beat During the Journalism Crisis

“…(Court reporter 11). Some magistrates' courts seldom see a journalist other than the local paper's court reporter, underlining previous findings (Chamberlain et al 2019). "It's been months since I last saw anybody else at magistrates' court, it's probably a couple of times a year that there's anyone else there.…”

“…In the US, court specialists have been squeezed out through a decline in the use of beat reporters and that layoffs have disproportionately affected veteran journalists, more likely to include experienced court reporters (Denniston 2007, Ryfe 2009, Policinski 2014, and in the UK context, Phipps-Bertram 2014. A lack of resources at UK local newspapers has left sparse coverage of magistrates' courts in particular (Hanna 2015, Howells 2016, Chamberlain et al 2019, although earlier work suggests magistrates' courts were not always well-attended by the press (McBarnet 1981, Herbert 2002. Local and national newspapers alike have often relied on specialist agencies to cover the courts, with 59% of local editors using at least some agency copy, and 5% relying on agencies alone (Robins 2016, Thornton 2017, meaning any decline in the size and scope of these news agencies puts the ability of newspapers to cover courts at further risk.…”

“…In the UK, the largest local press companies have long been criticised for compounding their problems through expensive acquisitions and neglecting local communities, with content increasingly produced at centralised locations (Engel 2009, Williams 2013, Media Standards Trust 2014, Moore 2015, Howells 2016, Hutton 2018, and concern has developed that local court reporting in particular has withered away (Davies 2009, Hanna 2015, Langdon 2017, Thornton 2017, putting in question the ability of the local press to continue to cover the courts. So far, there is relatively little scholarly evidence of this beyond the work of Chamberlain et al (2019), something this study aims to address.…”

Die Inhaltsanalyse im Forschungsfeld der Justiz- und Kriminalitätsberichterstattung

“…Galtung und Ruge 1965) an. Sie verweisen auf die Nachrichtenfaktoren Drama, lokale Nähe, Personalisierung und Negativismus, die in besonders starkem Ausmaß in der Justiz-und Gerichtsberichterstattung und auch Kriminalitätsberichterstattung vorzufinden sind (Brosius und Peters 2016;Chamberlain et al 2019;Hestermann 2010;Machill et al 2007;Eisenegger und Ettinger 2012;Strother 2017). Zudem verweisen Studien auch auf den Nachrichtenfaktor Überraschung als zentrales Selektionskriterium: Je überraschender ein juristischer Entscheid, desto wahrscheinlicher wird er medial aufgegriffen (Collins und Cooper 2015;Strother 2017;Ura 2009).…”

“…GerichtsreporterInnen und JuristInnen (bspw. Machill et al 2007;Eberle 1996) -oder mit Beobachtungen von Medienkonferenzen und Gerichtsprozessen (Machill et al 2007;Chamberlain et al 2019). Zudem wird auch im Rahmen von Experimenten die Wirkung der Berichterstattung auf die Einstellung der Bevölkerung gegenüber der Justiz und deren Entscheiden (bspw.…”