Social media never had much regard for the rigour of media law particularly when it comes to conversation around a serious crime.
You don’t have to look hard of Facebook or Twitter to find people discussing the individuals that are helping the police with their inquiries in the Joanna Yeates murder investigation in Bristol, in particular landlord Chris Jefferies.
Under the Contempt of Court Act 1981 it is an offence to publish anything that might impair a future trial. This has led the media to traditionally only reveal the name, occupation, age and general address of a suspect.
Yet in the Yeates case the media has led discussions in social media and has picked over Jefferies life in considerable detail. Have a look at this “we thought ‘nutty professor’ was gay” report in the Daily Mail. Perhaps we should be grateful that comments have been disabled.
The UK attorney general is reportedly considering issuing a notice to remind the media that coverage of the murder inquiry must not be in contempt.
Is yet another example of social media leading to the erosion of media law?
Hi Stephen thanks for your blog post. I find it really
shocking that under the UK and US system the news media is even
allowed to publish the last name of a suspect. In Europe it’s
pretty standard that you either give no information or just the
first name and initial. When a suspect is later found to be
completely innocent, they will always live under suspicion as long
as their name comes up on Google. If they are guilty — or even
goes to trial — it does indeed have the potential to sway jurors.
But I don’t think this is really about social media — it’s just
about media full stop. The articles in most places made it
Jefferies sound guilty.
The trouble is that when something starts to erode, someone tries to fix it. Obviously it’s very hard to come down on social networks or the users for speculating wildly, any law put in going that way isn’t going to be very enforceable. More likely they’ll want to nip it in the bud, perhaps we will see more injunctions against reporting on potentially big cases?
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Speed Communications, Amy Grimshaw. Amy Grimshaw said: Great point made by @wadds – #socialmedia eroding media law? Joanna Yeates murder case suggests so http://bit.ly/hoOzcc [...]
[...] Since Chris Jefferies was questioned as a suspect, social media has been rife with rumour, hysteria and plain out contempt – much of which contravenes the Contempt of Court Act (read Stephen Waddington’s post for more information). [...]
I was honestly surprised to see that they even released his name with such a high-profile and emotive case as this. I think without that initial information in the traditional press there wouldn’t have been the kindling to light the fire under the arses of people on the internet that like to rake the er, details, of the suspect’s life…The thing is, once that information’s out there it’s difficult to separate cause and effect, I think.