One goal of the Transparency Project is to provide balanced and accurate information about the family courts, so people can make up their own minds on topics that often (rightly) provoke debate, or even protest.
This can feel particularly useful if the press have just covered a family court decision, reaching a lot of people with their story, yet offering only a partial, or even an inaccurate account.
Responses in the comments section after such pieces tend to be dominated by rage at ‘the latest family court injustice’, with a few tentative voices wondering if they’ve really heard the whole story.
If a judgment has been published (at http://www.bailli.org or sometimes http://www.judiciarygov.uk/judgments), it can be useful to set out key facts or judicial findings from it that have been left out of the news story, to allow a more balanced view; or even to link to the full judgment.
Under the Transparency Guidance on Publication of Judgments 2014: Link, judgments are routinely anonymised in relation to the child and other family members (though not the lawyers or experts, including social workers and guardians). This isn’t always adequate (see discussion of ‘jigsaw identification’ here: Link) but it’s a crucial bottom line.
Yet when a major newspaper reports the story of a family court decision, leaving out key relevant facts and findings; and identifies the family members, it creates a dilemma.
Do you leave the controversial family court decision reported in an unbalanced and therefore inaccurate way?
Or publish relevant details from the judgment (even if not actually linking to it) but in so doing, enable the public to potentially link private, perhaps distressing details of parenting deficits and family life, to real, identifiable people; something unintended by the Judge, when directing publication of the anonymised judgment.
Paragraph 21 of the Transparency Guidance makes clear that any failure to ‘strictly preserve the anonymity of the children and members of their family in any published version of the judgement’ will be a contempt of court.
It seems clear to me that the spirit, if not the letter of the Guidance inhibits linking to the Judgment; or even quoting its intimate details in these circumstances.
For the child (and also those adults) who didn’t choose to ‘go public’; but perhaps also for the aggrieved adults who did but who could only be further distressed by being linked as named individuals to the details of the judgement.
A wider cross section of the media being willing to report decisions that matter immensely to families across England and Wales, in a balanced, sensitive and accurate way, might go some way towards addressing this dilemma.
With regard to your last sentence, excuse me whilst I duck as a herd of pigs goes flying over my head. Pardon my weary cynicism but I it seems to be very clear now what the increased publication of judgments will do for the Bookeresque tendencies of partial and inaccurate scaremongering; absolutely nothing. Journalists will ignore what the judgments actually say, print whatever they want and they can’t be corrected because that will mean identifying the family and being in contempt of court.
Alice and Sarah,
I know this post arose out of a particular recent press story which we were able to identify on BAILII but where the linking of the judgment with the news story had potential ramifications we did not think we could adequately predict or control. But it isn’t just about contempt of court – it is a bigger ethical issue. Because part of the discussion that led to us concluding we could not directly confront the inaccurate and misleadingly limited account of that case given in the press was because of the upset and distress that might be caused by us doing so – both to adults seeking press attention for their version / perspective (but perhaps not for those aspects of the judgment which were adverse to them), AND to other involved adults who had not sought such publicity AND (of course) potential upset to the children involved. I wonder if even without the contempt of court issue there would be a difficulty in publishing a fuller and more direct discussion?
Well, the family members who were quoted extensively all over the papers didn’t seem to give much thought to the upset and distress they were probably causing to the family members who didn’t give an interview. The published judgment suggests that the level of such distress would probably be pretty high.
It just seems to me that we have the worst of all possible worlds now. Newspapers can print nonsense on stilts without consequence or correction. Some judgments are published and there is no other impetus to improve transparency in the system.
I do wonder whether we have to grasp this nettle of ‘upsetting’ individuals. Something potentially more significant is at stake than the upset of the few; the wholesale incitement to distrust and attack an entire system of law.
Many (most) press reports don’t identify the people. No reason I can think of not to just link the anon Judgement in the comments section immediately following the national newspaper article online?
Much more frustrating when do directly or indirectly. See your point about worst of all worlds. What is your understanding of the breadth of meaning of para 21 Transparency Guidance ‘any published version of the Judgment’ with respect to contempt by the way?
Sounds pretty broad to me. As we have seen, ‘jigsaw’ identification is a real problem. And what is the evil they are trying to protect against? Local people knowing who you are? they probably do already. Or the wider populace? Who don’t care and won’t remember by next week. I am coming to the conclusion that people are getting far too over wrought by prospect of names getting out. In a few years who will care? Who will remember? I don’t think we are anywhere near as interesting to other people as we fear (or hope).
Sorry, I am in a very bad mood about all this, which is probably obvious. Just fed up of seeing many people whose back stories I now know very well in newspapers and on Facebook groups, decrying the Evil Secret Family Courts and taking no responsibility for, or even apparently aware of, the failings that brought them to the attention of the ESFC in the first place.
While I have been a stalwart for transparency and openness of the family courts for almost a decade now I have seen too many instances where by the Judgment published all bells and whistles is still mis-interpreted by the general media.
I would like to see more of the press journo’s present in court and then given guidelines or instructions on how the case maybe reported, many judgments these days can be very long and cumbersome for some to understand, the terminology used by some “old school” judges does not help in the interpretation of the case at hand.
There are far too many media reported cases that leaves more questions than answers simply because they have a selective process when reporting.
One paragraph in any Judgment could be critical of either party then further down the judgment it could become clear why the judge reached that particular point, when these such instances are published in the media the principle objectives are missed because it does not make for headline news.
I am not sure if it is really of any benefit for having the whole court judgment published, [what!! I hear the cries], unless your fully absorbed in the workings of the family courts the judgments can and do mean almost nothing for the general public to gain a better understanding of what actually occurred, think of it as lost in translation!
Many articles over the years that have been reported have often left an unpalatable taste, this is simply because the Journo’s reporting are again lacking the fundamental understanding of the process and procedures of the Family Courts.
I would prefer to simply see a judgment synopsis’ used more widely, if a Judge, any judge feels there is merit in informing the media about the particular case before them, then the Judge could simply issue the synopsis in the briefest of terms without the need for the “Dirty Laundry” to be aired, anonymously or other
I agree with what you say Jerry. But the particular problem here, and why I am getting so irate, is that the Mail and the Telegraph published their usual wide eyed nonsense about child adopted for absolutely no reason – when the judgment gave LOTS of very good reasons, expressed in clear, plain English.
I know journalists have to put a spin on it, get a good story, blah, blah, blah – but this is simply dishonest. And cruel – because it presumably encourages these family members in their delusional thinking that they would have been absolutely super carers for a young child and the only thing preventing them is the Evil Secret Family Courts.
And also, I am afraid that almost always the ‘dirty laundry’ has to be on display as that is threshold criteria.
I used to warn people ‘be careful what you ask for’ when they wanted more judgments published because that would mean the horrible tragic details of their family dysfunction would be on display.
Ha! pathetic naive idiot that I was. Little did I realise that people would simply ignore all of those tedious facts and print whatever they like.
I agree about summaries routinely of Judgements Jerry. Just one point but would help. And a standard way of presenting Judgements with clear headings etc. Eg the case we are talking about was badly presented. Judge would quote chunks from parties /submission and sometimes say ‘I agree’ and other times be silent with no real summary of the whole standing separately at the end. If I as an inexperienced journalists or not legally trained I wouldn’t be able to make any sense of it. Not suggesting for a moment that is why the journalists we are talking about report as they do. That’s political ideology and money.