Neil Arun didn’t want to miss a rare but risky opportunity to embed with an Iraqi police unit, hunting members of al Qaeda. But his employers -- responsible for Neil’s security -- weren’t happy. This film by Richard Pendry nvestigates how a frontline journalist balances risk and reward.
In an interview on BBC Radio 4's the World this Weekend (TW2 to its friends) Peter Clarke, former head of the Metropolitan Police's Counter Terrorism Command, has called for a review of the 1981 Contempt of Court Act. He believes the law of contempt hinders counter-terrorism policing by limiting the freedom of police officers to explain why they have conducted raids and made arrests. He makes a cogent case and it is delightful, if surprising, to hear a senior police officer arguing that juries can be relied upon to reach sensible conclusions without the limits on publication imposed by the act.
I merely note that the good policeman's plea, made in what he now considers to be the public interest, might have been made at any time in the last twenty eight years in the name of free speech. I learned the hard way how contempt law works to prevent journalists revealing evidence the public deserves to hear. This fundamental liberty surely ranks as high (not higher) in the league of public interest justifications as the right to efficient policing. In the USA jury trials are successfully conducted without the assumption that discussion of evidence before trial will create "a substantial risk that the course of justice...will be seriously impeded of prejudiced." I think the health of British democracy would be enhanced if this country reformed contempt and trusted citizen jurors to distinguish between reliable evidence and conjecture.
So widely cast is the contempt of court net that it's an offence to publish even the most basic details of how a jury reached its verdict, as The Times found to its cost in May. It had reported the misgivings of a jury foreman on the way a verdict was reached in the case of a childminder accused of murder.
The Divisional Court fined the newspaper £15,000 for contravening Section 8 of the act on two counts. David Pannick QC wrote that this part of the act is "an embarrassment to the legal system."
He said: "Even though there is no conceivable damage to the administration of justice, and no naming of any individual juror, the court has punished the publication of information that contributes to a debate on an important matter of public interest."
Even academic research into jury behaviour is an offence under the act. At the very least, as a first step to its amendment, let us start by allowing some robust research into this fundamental aspect of British justice.