Legal journalism could benefit from more open courts in 2009, says Joshua Rozenberg

Greater transparency and access to court information could give a much need boost to shrinking legal reporting in the UK, according to Joshua Rozenberg, former Telegraph legal editor (picture courtesy of Paul Grover, Telegraph Media Group).

Speaking to Journalism.co.uk, Rozenberg, who has left the Telegraph to pursue new freelance work alongside his columns for the Evening Standard and Law Society's Gazette, says plans to open up family courts to the public and the launch of the Supreme Court in October could offer new opportunities for legal journalism.

The Supreme Court is developing a media strategy that will make summaries of its judgments public, allow members of the public to watch cases and include some broadcasting of cases.

All elements that, says Rozenberg, are an attempt to keep the public better informed and can be used advantageously by journalists.

"If you have less legal coverage in the newspapers it is more important that public bodies make themselves as accessible as possible to individuals and members of the public who want to follow these events," he explains.

"You still need journalism and journalists, but at least there is the resource available for an intelligent member of the public."

The recent online publication of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decision not to prosecute the parents of Daniel James for assisting his suicide is significant in its transparency, says Rozenberg.

"From the organisation's point of view, it's saying you don't have to rely on these garbled press releases and biased opinions, and so on here's what we say, you can read it and there it is," he adds.

"Nobody can really spend time to cover trials except in the high profile cases full-time, so you often wait for the outcome at the end. The more you can make these things available, simply and quickly, the more accurately it will be reported and the more available it'll be to the public."

But journalists will still be needed, adds Rozenberg, to filter information, explain it and alert people to it. Opening up the courts and putting more, fully searchable, documents online will allow journalists to cover trials from anywhere in the world and help restore objectivity in court reporting.

"It [publishing court documents] is providing news to the public and in a way that is at least unbiased as viewed from the perspective of the reader. They can't blame a journalist for putting a particular spin on a story if the thing is simply reproduced from a verbatim document," he says.

Reviewing the last 12 months and the impact they will have on the UK's media law landscape, Rozenberg says the after-effects of Max Mosley's privacy case against the News of the World might be felt long into 2009:

Mosley's legacy
"The Mosley case is significant as just an indication of how things are going to go. It's significant because people [the press] think along tramlines of libel and defamation generally," explains Rozenberg.

"The idea that they could publish something that is true, but that could still get them into trouble is something that haven't quite grasped."

If Mosley's application to the European court of humans rights is successful, the ruling, which would require editors to contact the subject of stories that could infringe privacy before publication, would have a significant impact on both celebrity and non-celebrity news coverage.

Even Mosley's attempt to bring in a prior restraint rule 'may change the mood' among the UK media, he says.

Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre's allegations against Justice Eady are partly legitimate – Eady as a senior judge has been involved with several crucial cases affecting the press – but he is not developing the law along his own lines and none of his decisions were overturned by the Court of Appeal.

Baby P
Last year the limits of media law in the online world were sharply put in focus by the Baby P case, Rozenberg adds.

"If individuals are prepared to bend or even break the law as bloggers/online publishers there's not a great deal that can be done about it," he says, referring to information the media was barred from reporting on, but was widely available online.

The influence of the internet on jurors is out of the control of the courts too – juries must be trusted to judge a case by the facts, he adds, echoing Bob Satchwell, director of the Society of Editors in an interview with Journalism.co.uk.

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