Lights, camera, justice: ​An evaluation of the first 12 months of video broadcasting sentencing in the Crown Courts of England & Wales 

Reardon, Sally; Gross, Bernhard; Keppel-Palmer, Marcus; Smith, Thomas

Abstract

On 28 July 2022, the case of R v Ben Oliver made history when the sentencing remarks of Munro J were filmed and broadcast from the Old Bailey, marking the first time cameras were allowed into the Crown Court. This unarguably represented a significant step-change in media and public access to criminal courts in England and Wales (E&W). The UK broadcasters hailed this as a ‘landmark moment for open justice’: the much-vaunted principle that all should be able to see the inner workings of the courts. However, how meaningful this development is to the public understanding is yet to be fully understood. This paper evaluates the first 12 months of implementation of this policy. Though the law now offers access, this is limited to major broadcasters and only after going through a case-by-case application process. This research establishes the types of cases that attract attention, the way the footage is re-cut and re-packaged by news outlets from broadcasters’ main news bulletins, online outlets and newspaper websites. It represents the first descriptive and critical review of this major change in the nature of open justice in E&W
and argues that extremely limited use of footage by news outlets adds little to public understanding of the justice system.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: The Future of Journalism
• Start Date: Sep 14, 2023
• End Date: Sep 15, 2023
• Deposit Date: Oct 26, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 31, 2023
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/11395520