Newspapers, particularly locals, tend not to cover
courts any more. But are both they AND the
justice system losing out? DAVID BANKS reports
THE MAN from security firm G4S stared blankly at me. “Are you a magistrate?” he asked.“
No, I am a member of the public. A journalist, actually.”
He looked baffled (and told me later that he had “only seen one of your lot three times in the last 18 months, when a rape comes up, usually”).“Is there a magistrates court sitting this morning?” I persisted.He blinked and stepped forward, taking a look up and down the street as if to reassure himself that this wasn’t some Candid Camera stunt.
“Not exactly,” he began. “Well, actually there should be but there were only two cases today and one of them has been put off ‘til God knows when.”
“And the other?” I asked hopefully.
“Two o’clock this afternoon,” he said. “But I wouldn’t bother if I were you. It’s a case of a man from Bodmin accused of committing a motoring offence on Skye. It’s being held here [to protect my source I will not say exactly where ‘here’ is!] because we are the nearest court to Scotland, if that makes any sense?” The geo-judicial logic certainly seemed to have left him mystified.
“They’ll likely get a letter from him saying ‘Okay, I did it but I live in Bodmin’ and they’ll give him a fifty quid fine and that’ll be that,” ruled my amateur Mr Justice Cocklecarrot.
We talked for a while, the G4S courtroom custodian and I, as an icy wind blew down the street. But I found it almost impossible to explain to him my interest in reporting such events as magistrates court hearings. A lot seemed to be baffling him this day. Had I nothing better to do with my time than sit in a courtroom? he seemed to be asking. “It won’t be too popular with the punters,” he suggested.
It never was, as I recall: in my junior reporter days on the Warrington Guardian in the Sixties I was offered the occasional quid to ‘forget’ a conviction, omit a report or ‘bury’ a case in my notebook. They were usually petty thefts or shoplifting: cases which carried a social stigma. Sadly, the very act of offering a bribe guaranteed that publication, however brief, would be the outcome, “to protect the paper’s good name for honesty as much as anything,” as my old news editor told me the first time I revealed to him what had occurred.
Part of my basic training as a BBC journalist involved my being sent to the Old Bailey to view the life of a court reporter. In one case I was taking notes, then looked up and saw that the judge was looking towards the press gallery. After a while, I became convinced he was looking at me. He handed a note to the clerk and pointed in my direction. The clerk handed me the note. “That young journalist looks like Charles Dickens,” it read. When he winked at me, I made my excuses and left. Dickens himself started his writing career as a court reporter. I didn’t.