England: Vacant press seats leading to rise of distorted court reports

The reality of court proceedings is being “grossly distorted” as a result of waning court reporter numbers, a barrister has warned.

Andrew Langdon QC, chairman of the Bar Council, said that “citizen journalists” were stepping into the gap with skewed accounts of cases.

Writing for Counsel magazine, Mr Langdon said court reporters may soon become “largely a thing of the past”, resulting in a justice that “operates essentially unseen and unheard by the public”.

However, he also noted that there is “a small army of admirable bloggers and Tweeters who spend their time correcting misapprehension of what has happened in court”, adding that they “perform a valuable service because there are many less responsible pundits and politicians who, left unchecked, would be perfectly prepared to feed the immediate frenzy and fuel knee-jerk calls for reform of this or that”.

In the case of the family courts, The Transparency Project is trying to deal with the issue head-on. Its newly launched media guide is the kind of initiative which “may help to reduce the dangerous void personified by the vacant press seats in our courts,” the silk said.