Court Notes Confiscated - CORRECTIONS

REPORTS of my journalistic rights being trodden on below have been published in this week's Press Gazette after Johnathan Lovett, our arts don at the paper and NUJ rep suggested I tell them.

Holdthefrontpage.co.uk soon got word and were able to give the story more space, including a quote from my editor, Gary.
To say that Gary is livid would be an understatement. He hates any kind of authority overstepping the mark and rightly so.
But I did put up a fight.
I'm not a mouse and never let officials off lightly in interviews.
But it can be intimidating in a court room and my disappointing mistake was complying in the end on this occasion.
Now I'm angrier than I was before in my resolve to fight for press freedom and won't be letting anything like this get in my way again.

For the record the only true account of what really happened lies herein my blog. I did not hand the usher my notebook - but tore out a single sheet. The court has not appologised to either me or Gary directly. And I was not talking to other reporters as the court is quoted as claiming elsewhere. I was the only reporter in courtroom Four of Wood Green Crown Court that day.
The people talking were from the Department for Work and Pensions - one of whom was told to leave for trying to record the proceedings in a benefit fraud case - something all adept reporters know is in contempt of court and thus highly illegal.

I always find it amusing when I'm faced with health bosses, council chiefs or police, who are always armed with an entourage and so careful about eveything they say when sat across the table.
But it baffles me is why courts faff around so much in the presence of reporters.
If we publish something that's not meant to be made public, we're the ones that are going to get in trouble - not them, so it's utterly incomprehensible.

There are jobs that are respected and admired - and then there's journalism.
I've always enjoyed that sense of risk and mischief that our trade exudes.
Being a journalist is a thankless task that's never really bothered me. We are not ones who are ever going to have rose petals strewn in out paths and we don't expect to.
It's just ironic that no-one would have a clue what was going on in the world were it not for what we do.

Law out of Order

LAST week at court my notes got taken from me.
I was at Wood Green Crown court to report on a case that had a section 39 of the Children and Young Person’s Act reporting restriction on it.
When you see things like “who cannot be named for legal reasons” or “a 17-year-old has been charged” instead of an actual name, in a story you can be sure that there is an S.39 hovering nearby.
Simply put, it’s there to protect the identity of a young person mentioned in a case.
But it’s not infallible. Last year, I successfully challenged an S.39 after asking the court to lift the ban based on a matter of public interest as it was a high-profile case - covered in the nationals and the defendant had killed someone.

Back to date, I was three quarters down my first page of notes and a bespectacled usher who looked like a dodgy librarian appeared.
She said that I wasn’t allowed to take any notes due to the reporting restriction and could I tear the page out please.
And what precisely do you want me to do with it? I wanted to ask.
She even had the audacity to ask me if I knew what an S. 39 was.
I understand that courts don’t tend to like journalists but she was wrong so I told her that.
I was well within my rights to report on the case - as long as I didn’t breach the S.39 order.
She confiscated the page, plonked herself on a bench nearby and copied out my shorthand while I looked on agog.
I was stupefied, feeling both furious and paralysed with panic, uncertain of what to do.
She passed a note to the clerk. I quickly scrawled one of my own.
As I approached the clerk, he handed me a note back that read: “take notes but no publicity”.
He was wrong too. Publicity is exactly what I was there for.
No time to argue I raced back to my seat and got back to doing my job.
But not before unfolding the piece of paper that the clerk had written his note to me on the back of.
It said: “I’ve taken the notes said if you agreed she can have them back. She is a reporter and reckons she knows what a sec 39 is so I still took them and said she can ask you for them back.”
Upon release, I phoned the news desk and got it off my chest.
We ranted about the bane of our lives having to face court staff that know less about legal workings than we do.
It’s like having to tell one of Jesus’ Wise Men that the son of God’s mother was a virgin.
Next time I’m taking my copy of Mcnae’s Essential Law for Journalists to wave in the air if that same usher or otherwise tries to stop me from doing what reporters were put on this earth to do.