Court reporting: Bench press

A tour guide who shows people around the Royal Courts of Justice makes a stop at one corner of the press room, right outside the door to the cells. There, he informs each group he escorts that, when he first entered the building’s hallowed corridors many years ago, 25 court reporters were working for the Press Association. ‘Now there’s only a handful,’ he adds. 

Were you to take that tour, you would hear various explanations for the large reduction in headcount, including the rise of the internet. To me, as one of the ‘handful’ trying to work while tourists stared through the window, it felt like being reminded of one’s own mortality, like a lobster in a restaurant tank.

Nothing has really summed up the long, slow decline of court reporting than repeatedly hearing how our ranks have been depleted over the past few decades, while furiously bashing out the day’s court news. So I owe it to the brave souls still battling away to say that, where court reporting is valued and supported, it is thriving and in good hands.

But in terms of volume, we have lost a great deal. Big-ticket cases involving Hollywood stars, WAGs and occasionally royalty may draw journalists to court in numbers, drive traffic to websites and dominate the news agenda. But the rapid changes in how we consume news have seen a steep decline in the volume of specialist court reporting carried by media organisations.

The rise of social media has allowed misinformation about our justice system to proliferate in the gap. Increasing reliance on police press releases and the ever more complex logistics of covering courts have contributed to some outlets not sending reporters to court as often – if at all.

Added to that are a sharp drop in the number of trainee journalists learning shorthand (as well as available tutors), court reporting no longer being a compulsory module for journalists’ accreditation, and a reluctance among younger journalists and trainees to be exposed to the grim reality of most court hearings. These factors all contribute to a sense that the future of court reporting hangs in the balance.

Bread and butter

Court reports were once the bread and butter of newspapers, with pages regularly filled with round-ups of local crimes and shocking cases that gripped the nation. However, as the industry’s economic model has suffered death by a thousand cuts, court reporting has been scaled back dramatically.

The emptying of the press benches was brought home most starkly in a study by former journalist now academic Brian Thornton at Winchester University. He found that from 2012 to 2016, court reporting in England and Wales had dropped by 30% in the national press and 40% in the regionals. In 2018, Igor Judge, a former lord chief justice, described this decline as a threat to the justice system.

The following year, the Cairncross Review highlighted the stark reality facing court reporting. It made several recommendations, including expanding the BBC’s Local Democracy Reporting Service, which is administered by regional press groups. To date, the service – an admirable venture that does much to ensure democracy is scrutinised – does not include court reporting in its remit.

Why should this matter? Well, a strengthened court reporting ecosystem no doubt fulfils a democratic function too. As the late, great Duncan Campbell put it, just one week after the Cairncross Review was published, while there is no shortage of commentary on crime and the causes of crime, the public ‘would often be better served by an accurate report on how such offences happen in the first place and how they are investigated, prosecuted, defended, judged and punished’.

Writing in a comment article for the Guardian, where he covered the crime beat for more than 20 years, he warned: ‘A remedy is urgently required. An uninformed country, as we are becoming increasingly aware, is an ignorant country, and just as ignorance is no defence in law, nor should it be for the parlous state of our criminal justice system.’ He even referred to the prison overcrowding crisis, bemoaning the fact that there was little fuss among an uninformed public.

World we have lost

To fully appreciate what has been lost, it is important to understand why court reporting matters at all. Many journalists (and media lawyers) will be familiar with philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s observation: ‘Publicity is the very soul of justice. It is the keenest spur to exertion and the surest of all guards against improbity.’

Open justice is more than a lofty legal ideal – it is integral to the concept that for justice to be done, it must be seen to be done. The day-to-day traffic of criminal court, with its roster of murderers, drug dealers, robbers and rapists, is the most familiar aspect of court reporting to both journalists and the public, and fulfils an important function. We see the justice system in action, lengthy sentences act as a deterrent and victims are given a voice.

Coverage of the civil, family and coroners’ courts also plays a key role in informing the public of the workings of the justice system and wider societal issues, but these courts are not as well covered. Journalists who regularly attend courts and develop knowledge, skills and good instincts can spot patterns, such as a rise in a particular type of crime, and dig into root causes. Court reporting also plays an additional democratic function in scrutinising state power, the judiciary and the rule of law.

Jeremy Britton, the BBC’s stalwart producer at the Old Bailey, neatly summed up the importance of court reporting in his farewell speech as he left his role in 2025 after nearly 30 years.

Referring to the inkwells which remain in the press benches (no longer used), he said: ‘They mark the start of the court reporting story and show how our presence has been ingrained into the very fabric of the building for more than a century. As long as court reporters continue to sit here, report proceedings and break verdicts, then the future should hold no fear.’

Indeed, the work of a court reporter, save for a few added bells and whistles, is largely unchanged since Charles Dickens sat in Doctors’ Commons filing dispatches on will disputes (no doubt making notes for Bleak House).

Digitisation

However, for those picking up the baton, there are reasons to be fearful. A push towards digitisation of the justice system – while necessary and, some would say, long overdue – has had unintended consequences for court reporting.

Tristan Kirk won Private Eye’s Paul Foot award for his dogged campaigning on the Single Justice Procedure while he was the Evening Standard’s dedicated court reporter. Under the procedure, introduced in 2015 for minor offences, more than half of all magistrates’ court cases in England and Wales are now dealt with by a single magistrate who considers the case documents in private, with the media unable to attend – though reporters can request outcomes and information. 

Kirk’s reporting exposed a widespread miscarriage of justice, with examples including people with dementia being prosecuted over unpaid care bills, cancer sufferers fined for TV licensing breaches, and people with learning difficulties or severe mental health issues being sentenced with mitigating circumstances not taken into account.

‘It is willingly allowing frail pensioners, vulnerable people and mental health sufferers to be cruelly convicted,’ he said, adding that it is ‘difficult to understand’ why there has been no action from the government – despite widespread calls for reform.

Now courts editor for the Press Association, Kirk says: ‘In the last few years, there have been substantial changes to the way that information about court cases is delivered to journalists, as part of the government’s digitisation programme. Some of these changes are, frankly, disastrous to the effectiveness of my job.

‘It’s difficult to continue arguing for open justice and transparency in the face of government agencies who do not care enough about how people like me actually perform their roles. But as tiresome as it might be, we must continue to push and argue, because otherwise governments will close off information, either through cost-cutting, accidentally, or simply because they want to. In summary, the court system has gradually modernised, which was great at first, but now is in danger of leaving the media behind and in itself becoming a threat to open justice.’

Closed courts

Many courts have closed – 164 of 320 magistrates’ courts in England and Wales between 2010 and 2019 – taking cases off many local patches. Other courts have been left largely uncovered. Police press releases are used to plug gaps, but they are no substitute for independent reporting and often include little detail.

Even when courts are open, justice may not be. Access to court documents remains an issue. Fewer journalists in court means no one is there to stand up and argue if a stray reporting restriction is imposed. Freelance journalist Charlie Moloney won a challenge in 2025 against a reporting restriction imposed in the case of a woman charged with murder over the death of her four-year-old son.

Despite it being long established in law that anonymity cannot be given to the deceased in criminal cases, an order made by magistrates was continued by a Crown court judge, and only lifted after Moloney wrote to the judge.

He believes a higher number of incorrect reporting restrictions are being put in place because journalists are not there to ‘push back’ against the rise of requested privacy measures.

Moloney says this was one of three murder cases at the same Crown court within two months where no journalist was present. Some legislation has restricted media freedom further – a law to prohibit the naming of alleged sex offenders for 30 years after their death in Northern Ireland was withdrawn after a legal challenge.

Court cases and wider legal matters are often – either deliberately or ignorantly – misreported both on social media and in some sections of the press. Judges have been branded ‘enemies of the people’. Far-right agitators posing as journalists have intimidated reporters both inside and outside courtrooms.

Having fewer specialist court reporters makes it more difficult than ever to ensure the public has an accurate impression of the justice system. As Kirk puts it: ‘There is, and has been for a while, a void in court reporting which is being filled at times by nonsense reporting on social media. The only logical way to counter the disinformation is through solid factual court reporting, but it does feel sometimes like there’s a lack of will within institutions and even media organisations to put effort into making that a reality.’

Reasons for optimism

There have been some positive developments. Remote access to courts, rapidly expanded due to lockdowns, is here to stay, making it possible for journalists to cover cases across the country from one place.

Judges’ sentencing remarks are regularly broadcast, after a long-fought battle by media organisations to allow cameras in court. There are myriad ways reporters are presenting the stories they get from courts – from podcasts to vertical video and beyond.

The judiciary is undertaking a transparency drive to boost open justice; the family courts are more open than ever; and reporters should now be notified of reporting restrictions in advance to allow them to make representations. More rulings are published and more include press summaries, as judges are careful to ensure their decisions are communicated correctly.

Some journalism lecturers tell me their students love court reporting most of all, and I have met some of these young enthusiasts. At the University of Sheffield, lecturers have introduced resilience training to prepare students to cope with distressing cases.

Most importantly, readers still want court stories and will pay for them. Richard Duggan, regional editor north west at Newsquest, told a symposium on court reporting at the University of Salford in June 2025 that data showed they were gaining subscribers through covering court cases.

That event, hopefully the first of many, was organised by another former journalist-turned-lecturer, Dr Richard Jones, to launch his book Reporting the Courts. During the course of his research, which found there remains a commitment in the UK’s press to cover the courts, a fellow court reporter told him: ‘I don’t think there is much I would change. It’s the best job on the paper’.

Sian Harrison is a freelance journalist and co-author of McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists. The 28th edition is out now.