This book makes a critical intervention into debates about journalism and the crisis in local news. Interrogating the history and current practice of court coverage in the UK, the author argues for its importance as a central feature of both open justice and public interest reporting.
The book challenges narratives of a decline in the perceived quality of local media. Yet it also highlights a reliance on major local press companies facing acute financial challenges, meaning court reporting faces a potentially precarious future. The book critically examines coverage of the courts in the context of financial crises which have diminished both newspapers and the criminal justice system. How the norms of court journalism emerged and evolved are put under scrutiny and the book then considers how court reporting is practiced today, including the use of cameras and social media as well as remote hearings during and since the pandemic. The author takes us inside a major murder trial and explores why court reporting remains worth preserving and enhancing.
Offering recommendations which could help to maintain and extend coverage of the courts, this volume will interest students and scholars of journalism, mass communication, media studies, media law and communication studies.
1. Introduction – The case for reporting the courts
2. Local public interest journalism under threat
3. The history and development of contempt law
4. Evolving restrictions on court reporting
5. Cameras in court
6. The courts beat
7. The news values of court reporting
8. Court reporting in practice
9. Reporting on a major trial
10. Conclusion – The case for (still) reporting the courts
Biography
Richard Jones is Director of Journalism, Politics and Contemporary History at the University of Salford. Before working in academia, he was a journalist for Sky News and the BBC among others. Reporting the Courts is his first book
