The Dying Art of Court Reporting

Polly Rippon, a former court reporter with the Sheffield Star who now teaches journalism at Sheffield University, joins me to discuss the art of court reporting and why it is so important. We talk about why trials are covered differently than they were in the past, why it can be dangerous for untrained people to cover cases, and some of the social issues which have only been unearthed by court reporting. This, by the way, is the Sheffield case I mention during the first part of our talk. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1190207.stm 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 3:49

Welcome back to the Total Crime Podcast. This is episode 15. And I have with me Polly Ripon, who uh is an experienced journalist and now a university teacher in journalism at Sheffield University. Welcome.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

Thanks, Chris.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

So can you tell me start off by telling me just a bit about your career? How did you get into journalism and what what sort of what sort of stories were you writing about for most of your career?

SPEAKER_01 4:23

So I did an English degree at Sheffield actually. And then when I finished, I went travelling. I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do with my life and came back and I did an NCTJ qualification at Sheffield College, which in those days was subsidised by the government, so it's free. And it was a six-month postgraduate fast track course, and you learned all the kind of basics of newspaper reporting. So I did that, and then I went to work in the regional press. I think my first job was in Wakefield on the Wakefield Express. I worked there for about three years and learned all the kind of different aspects of local news reporting. I then had a brief spell in PR but uh left that and ended up at the Sheffield Star, um, where I was there for about 13 years. So I spent much of my career at the star. Um so yeah, um, while I was there, um I did a variety of roles, but most um for the most part, I was a crown court reporter. So I spent a lot of time down at the Crown Courts. Also covered crime for a bit. Um, but yeah, I covered a lot of criminal cases and sort of quite a few high-profile cases that took place in Sheffield um in the kind of 2000s, really.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

Um yeah, I did the NCTJ like you, and it it was really useful, wasn't it? You've learned, you know, the basics of law, uh, you know, contempt of court, um, libel, and all that sort of thing. And also, I don't know about you, but I I learned shorthand up to 100 words a minute, and I still use it today, you know. I still find it really, really useful. I don't think there's any substitute for it. Um, you can't really you're not really allowed to use recorders in court. So, you know, it's the only way to take, you know, some people talk far too quick, you know, even though judges try to slow them down sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

They uh yeah, they definitely speak at over 100 words a minute. Um, but like you, I mean, I did shorthand, it was the thing to do, everyone did it, you know, no one questioned it at all in those days. Um these days, uh our students struggle with it, they really do, they don't stick with it. Um, and as a result, we have fewer journalists leaving um with shorthand qualifications, which is a problem with reporting.

SPEAKER_00 6:58

Yeah, I mean that I guess uh outside of court reporting, maybe people don't use it so much. Um, you know, used to I used to use it in sort of covering council meetings as well, but you know, fewer and fewer journalists are sent to cover council meetings or planning committee meetings and all that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Um, so maybe, yeah, maybe nowadays they they'll get their uh you know recorders out and or just record it on their phones, even um Yeah, and do I think um you then have to listen to it, transcribe it, go through and pick out the best bits. Obviously, there are some AI tools that you could use to do that these days, but you know, if you if you're taking a shorthand note and you put an asterisk by the best bits and the best quotes, it's really easy to look back through your notes really quickly and pick out you know the best lines and the best quotes because you've highlighted them as you're taking them down. Um and that's what I tell our students to do. Um, but again, you know, a lot of them they have hours and hours of interviews and transcriptions that they need to do. Um, and shorthand I just think is much quicker. Um, it it does feel a bit like it's a dying art, it really does.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Yeah. Uh so what sort of cases do you cover at the Sheffield store? What um murder trials and things like that?

SPEAKER_01 8:17

Or so um everything. I mean, some of the high-profile ones I did. We had Prince Naz, you know, the box uh world champion box um involved in a dangerous driving case. He basically crashed um a high-powered expensive car head on into um a Sheffield resident who broke every bone in his body. So he was prosecuted for that. I covered that one. Um, I did a lot of cold cases. There was a cold case team set up by South Yorkshire Police um to solve serious sex crimes that had been committed kind of decades before. Um they got some home office funding. So I covered about 10 of those, which was really interesting. Um, had a trip up to the three.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

So did you did you sorry, I'm talking over you, but uh did you cover a case? I I remember covering it um, you know, not as much as the local paper, but there was um a headless body found in a bag in Sheffield, um, might be in the 90s, I think, or the early noughties. Um turned out to have some connection with a I think the victim was a Yemeni guy, and they they eventually worked out who it was. Um just wanted to cover that one.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

Don't think I covered that one. No, I think that would stick with me.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, I was uh maybe maybe thinking of pran Prince Nas Nassi Mohamed uh thought about it with his Yemeni roots. Um I was I was a big fan. I went I went to see him in fight in Vegas. The only time he actually lost, actually. But yeah, and I remember I remember that that was a big story when he crashed the car, didn't he? Um had he retired from boxing or was he still boxing at the time?

SPEAKER_01 10:03

I think at the time he'd I think he'd finished. I think he'd retired. Um and he had a big um kind of mansion up at Ringinglow Road, which is where the crash happened. And he was I think he was with a either a business consultant or brother or something. I think he was showing off and you know, i down this single track down this road, and um the guy the victim Anthony was coming towards him. He was a painter and decorator. I don't think he ever worked again after that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:36

Um what about um do you remember any uh particular legal challenges or or mistakes that you made? Uh I I've got one if if you uh if you're struggling to remember.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

Um I've I remember challenging some reporting restrictions.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

Oh, right.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

Erroneous reporting restrictions that judges had made.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Um do you want to explain that to you know listeners? How do you go about that and what what does that mean, you know, for for what they will see in their paper or whatever?

SPEAKER_01 11:09

Yeah, absolutely. So in certain cases, for example, all victims of sexual assaults have anonymity by law. Um, but they can decide if they want to to waive their anonymity in writing so that they can be identified in reporting. Generally doesn't happen until the end of the case. Um, also, young people, so under 18, are protected um by anonymity in the in the youth court. So that's in the court that they first go to. And there's an automatic restriction, which means that the media cannot name young people who were charged with criminal offences. You can report on them, you can report their age, but you cannot identify them. Um and the thought is that, you know, they're still children, they should be given time to rehabilitate themselves. But in really serious cases, for example, murders, um, quite often the court will make a reporting restriction, and then the press will challenge it and say, you know, this is really serious. Um, so this happened in the Southport case with the murders in Southport, where Rudikabana was 17, I think, about to turn 18. Um, and the media challenged the reporting restriction and said, you know, we should be able to name him their really serious offences. He's nearly 18, and the judge agreed and lifted the reporting restriction.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

So what that means is that you know, you can I think a lot of people didn't realise that when they, you know, they heard that the judge had lifted it, but they don't think they probably realised that that was only in response to a media, you know, application. Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:50

And it also, I mean, in the Bolger case as well. So the two boys accused of killing James Bolger, um, initially they had anonymity because they were under 18. Obviously, they were 10, I think. Um, but at the end of the trial, once they were found guilty, the judge lifted the reporting restriction and they were named. Um, and obviously, once they've served their sentences, they were given something quite unusual, which is a kind of um lifelong change of, you know, change of identity. Um, and so people now, even now, people cannot report who those boys are and where they are, what they're living, you know, where they're living, etc. Um, the idea being that they've rehabilitated, although I know one of them's committed further offences.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

Yeah, I know that really sticks in the gullet of uh a lot of people, members of the public and probably journalists as well. Um one other thing I wanted to ask you about was um, because it in in recent, you know, probably since during your career, um, that you know, that we had the internet, we had social media, um, and in the you know, in the old days, it was the only people who were in covering you know a case in court were journalists, you know, qualified journalists or people who were employed as journalists. Um but then latterly we got um one of the members of the public who would have a phone in in the public gallery and uh could write whatever they want, or you know, I think for a time people called themselves citizen journalists who were just basically you know people doing it in their spare time or or whatever. Um and sometimes they didn't have that legal training. Um for example, in the was it the Ched Evans case, you know, he was another wasn't he a former Sheffield United player. Um and during his trial, I think numerous people were were tweeting the name of the victim, uh, or the complainant rather, and um, you know, completely breaking the law, uh completely oblivious, I think, uh, of what you know what the consequences were. And think, am I right in thinking some of them, you know, some of them were fined or even sent to jail?

SPEAKER_01 15:01

Well, some prosecuted. Um, if you if you name someone who's got anonymity, um, and and in that case it was a sexual offence, so the victim had this anonymity under the Sexual Offences Act. So you are then prosecuted under the Sexual Offences Act for name for breaking that law. Um, and I think there were people, I think there were about maybe four, possibly more people, friends and supporters of Ched Evans, who were convicted of um breaking that law and fined for that, um, for posting identifying information about the victim on social media sites. So, I mean, generally when you're in court, um, you know, judges will, journalists, bona fide journalists who are either freelance or working for a title, are allowed to live tweet. Um, they are allowed to use their phones as long as they're silent, um, and they are allowed to kind of post updates and write stories actually while they're in court, um, live report the evidence. Members of the public are not really allowed to do that. Um, they're not allowed to do that. So um judges are you know quite um quite sort of good at looking in the public gallery and making sure people aren't recording evidence or posting on social media. And you know, you can you can actually get locked up for doing that. If if a judge finds you in contempt of court um for being on your phone during proceedings or posting something you shouldn't, you can be fined or even sent to prison. Um so you know, they do warn members of the public gallery, um, you know, they will throw people out if they see them doing that, if they see anyone doing anything that they think is interfering with the judicial process, then they will crack down on that. Um, and they're very tough about it because obviously, you know, if people start doing that, it really becomes a problem for the whole system. Um, but journalists are allowed to. And generally, you know, in court reporting, um, the courts will know who the kind of regular journalists are that come along, whether they're local or national, um, and that is allowed, which is, you know, it's good. I live tweeted evidence from the Hillsborough Inquest, for example, when the second inquest happened in Warrington, I went over um and spent quite a lot of time over there reporting the evidence live. Um, I also did that for a murder trial in Sheffield. I think it was the first time a murder trial had been live tweeted, and that was the case of um the organ organist Alan Greaves, who was murdered on Christmas Eve, and that was nationally because it was a Christmas Eve attack, and he'd gone to church um to play the organ. And I and I live tweeted that he was attacked on his way and hit over the head by somebody with an axe. Um, and it was interesting because a member of his family contacted me um and said, I'm not able to come to court, but I can keep up with the evidence because I can read your tweets. So, you know, that's when you realize that actually it's something worthwhile that you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

Yeah, there's some excellent uh live pages now. I think Manchester Evening News, uh, Liverpool Echo, I think I've done it. Um, you know, the live coverage of um trials. The the currently one at the moment is the Jamie Varley case in Preston, which is um uh guy on on trial for the death of a baby who he was adopting. Um, and they I I've been you know watching their coverage, and it's incredibly quick, you know, how how quick they are to sort of um and and sort of very accurate as well. It's not like um subtitles where there's loads of typos that they have to correct, but um yeah, very impressive.

SPEAKER_01 18:51

The Manchester Evening News court reporter who excuse me covered the Lucy Leppy case. Um I mean he output an incredible amount of words during that trial. He was not only kind of live tweeting the case as it happened, he was writing updates for the newspaper, live blogs for the website. Um, you know, I think he said, I think he said something like he was producing about 9,000 words a day, something like that, um, the course of that trial. Um, and you know, as you know, people love true crime stories, they're popular. I mean, we need more court reporters.

SPEAKER_00 19:34

Yeah, I was gonna get around to asking you that about whether you think that there, I mean, from your day and and I started out in the 90s, and I remember covering, you know, almost invariably you've got to even magistrates' courts, there'd be there'll be journalists in court, you know, for most cases. Um, you know, like a murder trial at the old Bailey, the press bench would be, you know, half a dozen or more people covering it. Nowadays there's so many trials, murder trials, even, which there's nobody there, nobody covers it. Um, and the only coverage that ends up in the papers is often based on a press release from the police, which is absolutely shocking, you know. And if somebody's acquitted, obviously the police they're they're not going to tell you that you know their their prosecution has failed. So quite often it won't be won't even be reported. So, yeah, what do you how important is it that courts are covered?

SPEAKER_01 20:37

Well, I mean, it's really important as far as I'm concerned. Um, you know, the case, you know, the Giselle Pellico trial in France, that only came to light because a local reporter went along, found out about the case, went along, covered the start of it, and then obviously the entire media descended on it because you know it was such an unusual and shocking um trial. And there will be cases in the UK that are going unreported. I mean, there are every day, absolutely. Same time started, we had somebody in magistrates' court, and you know, in magistrates it's the lower level stuff, but you pick up some quirky, interesting, entertaining sometimes stories about people falling out with their neighbours and you know, all of this kind of sometimes people who are kind of reasonably high profile in their communities, that type of thing, you know, Lord Mayors and um people from the I don't know, societies that are well known, and all of that stuff's going unreported because you know, media organizations, particularly local and regional newspapers, um, don't have the staff that they're used to. I mean, just to give you an example, when I joined the Sheffield Star in 2005, we had, I would say, about 25 to 30 reporters. There were five additional. newspaper every day Sheffield, Doncaster, Rotherham, Barnsley, to Sheffield. Um we had a whole desk of sub-editors, we had photographers, we had specialists. There are now about 10, I think. And they cover everything. And not only do they have to produce a paper, they also have to, you know, regularly update the website. 24-7 social media as well.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

I think local local paper reporters get a get a bad um you know I I'm I'm guilty myself of sort of criticising local papers for their coverage. But when you think how short staffed they are it's not it's not surprising. I don't really I don't blame the the journalists it's the it's the the higher ups or the accountants who've who've made so many redundancies. Yeah shocking um I remember a good example of this right I I cut when I was I started out in um well first I was in a paper in Hampshire then I went to the Gloucester citizen. So that was the evening paper in Gloucester. I happened to move there a year before Fred and Rose West case broke. And I remember on the very day it it broke you know the on the day the police started digging up their back garden um we looked up in the electoral register who lives at 25 Cromwell Street Frederick and Rosemary West. And we went to look in the cuttings file. So in those days papers used to have cuttings files and it was little brown envelopes with it with everybody's name with a name written on it and this one there was a if it was just one cutting. In the file there was Rose Frederick and Rose West and it was this cutting from a case where they'd been acquitted I think of um sexually assaulting a woman it turned out I think it was one of their lodgers um but at that point we immediately thought wow you know something's going on here this this couple and now they're digging up their back garden and they they presumably got away with this a couple of years ago you know so nowadays how how few people I mean I think that was a magistrate's court case as well um if I remember rightly so yeah that the it's also sort of ever diminishing you know the the less coverage you know the less coverage you're doing of courts the less likely people are to buy your paper or look at your website and then it gets worse and worse the advertising goes down and you you lay more people off and it just gets worse and worse.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

So I don't know how we um we stop that you know how I mean I think um you know the Sheffield Star now they've got a dedicated court reporter they still do lots of court coverage um chester evening news said you know their court coverage is really well read people like reading about crime and true crime and people in their communities committing crime and um I think you know from the editor's point of view if they have to send a reporter to court for three hours and they come back with nothing that report any words for the newspaper or website or social channels and if they're sat in the office they could write I don't know five stories in that time um so you know there's sometimes they choose not to send people to court um which is a real shame but my students go down they sit in court they listen they come out they're delighted with themselves a for being able to like cover it and get the stories down but B just the experience of going into the courtroom and seeing what it's like and how sick it is and the atmosphere and you know they learn a lot about the criminal justice system and the delays that are being experienced at the moment um so it's a really important experience and I think you know a lot of people would be surprised but you we just don't have the reporters these days to kind of you know cover the courts every single day so there are cases that aren't going reported. Yeah so your students how many of the do you get do many of them you get you know think they've got the bug for court reporting or do they they want to do sort of entertainment or all sorts of different stuff I guess yeah I mean some of them some of them you always get some that absolutely love it and I have former students who've come back to me and said oh I was in court today and I thought about you and you know I remembered what you were telling us about this that and the other and you know I really enjoyed covering it and I've got students who find it terrifying actually that's quite a recent thing um they're really uncomfortable with it they don't like listening to the difficult details that you have to listen to they struggle to kind of separate it in a professional way from this that is interesting I mean I know uh the the younger generation is sometimes you they've referred to that by the horrible word snowflake isn't it but um I think yeah maybe the younger generation are more sort of aware of their emotions or aware of things how things are affecting them.

SPEAKER_00 27:13

I remember cover I covered the um Fred Rose West trial and I remember the there was a real macho culture when there was a story in the papers at the time that the BBC had offered counselling to its reporters covering the case and the the the BBC staff covering that case just got absolutely the Mickey taken out of them by all the other journalists who thought you know oh you're you know it was it was just in hindsight it was quite you know embarrassing how we were mocking sort of an important issue you know mental health um and and it does affect you now I don't know I maybe I've got a very thick skin um it's very few cases actually sort of upset mine sort of mental health or get me really I can't sleep or whatever. But yeah I mean there are some shocking details and a lot of people don't realize do they how much how how often the journalists or or editors are censors and they they decide you know the the public can't be reading this it's just too awful yeah that's really true.

SPEAKER_01 28:23

And I mean again um you know with the students that you are you are sanitizing what is heard in the courtroom. There's a lot of detail in there that's horrible and grisly and upsetting and you have to make it kind of publishable for a family newspaper or website or whatever. So we do we do teach them about sort of being resilient and self-care looking after themselves. That is something that has changed massively and actually it was really interesting you to hear you say that about the Rose West case because after the Lucy Leppby case there was a morning where all of the families affected um read their victim impact statements or the victim impact statements were read to the court and the journalists who were covering that I think there was someone from The Guardian um Liz Hull who obviously did the podcast about the trial um afterwards they said that was the most harrowing evidence I've ever had to listen to and they actually spoke out about how it had upset them and you know to fear tearful and upset in court. And um there did used to be very much a m a macho culture or a kind of you know you just get on with it it's your job be professional write your story forget about it. And like you I mean I I would say I'm relatively unaffected by some of the cases that I've covered but I do know people who covered court for a long time and actually in the end had to stop covering it because it was the years and years and years of kind of horrible evidence and and that kind of thing. And you know judges and uh judges get I think they're offered support journalists aren't really they just have to cover it and listen to the details um I it's definitely becoming a you know more recognized that kind of more support is needed for journalists in that arena because they are really difficult cases to cover and that one in Preston that you mentioned earlier I know someone covering that and he's given me some of the basics and and I and it's just terrific and I don't know that I could cover that um you know as well it just yeah very upsetting yeah um there I heard a torrential downpour here which I don't know whether you could hear or whether podcasters people listening could hear but it actually bucketed it down um yeah we we've been talking quite negatively about the um the downside of of you know journalism local papers not enough reporters not enough people covering courts but on the on the upside there are I think kind of um little sort of buds of hope um people seem to be cottoning on to the public's appetite for um you know not true crime in a sort of entertainment way but just wanting to know what why why is um you know why are there drugs and antisocial behaviour and gangs and what what is going on what's it all about about and you can only understand that by listening to a trial um and so there are things like you mentioned the trial podcast um which started out with the Lucy Leppy trial and they've moved on to other cases and there's other people um you know YouTubers in America covering cases like the PDD case was sort of covered in sort of daily sort of detail which obviously you can do in America easier because there's no uh rules really about what you can say but do you think um you know especially podcasts could be the way forward as far as you know better coverage yeah I mean I would welcome anything that um encourages people to listen to court stories and and and engage with them and understand you know how the criminal justice system works. You see a lot of people kind of spouting off on social media um especially when someone's been charged with a criminal offence people don't seem to understand that you can't publish much until the trial actually starts. So anything that kind of educates the public on um court cases and how they work I think I you know I'm all in favor of it. And I think you know people like deliver people like content in bite-sized chunks these days we know that our attention spans are shorter than they used to be you know um we don't read as much as we did we don't read newspapers we can't concentrate or focus so even bits and pieces on TikTok or Instagram reels however you want to report it I think as long as you're doing that legally and ethically well then yeah why not bring it on you know open it up to a whole different community of kind of um reporters so that people are educated about how our courts work and how people are punished for committing offences that affect the community and and and also you know raising awareness of cases drives change people protest about cases child sexual abuse for example has become massive in recent years um because of the brave women um you know mainly from Rotherham that stood up and um spoke out about the grooming gang scandal and you know and I know that's happened in other parts of the UK and we see hundreds and hundreds of men now prosecuted for having indecent images of children. They are in court every single day up and down the coast um and that's all because of these women that have been brave enough to speak out. So yeah whatever we can do to get more court cases out into the public domain and raise awareness of some of the issues in our communities I think that can only be a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 34:15

So thank you very much Polly that's really interesting and you're absolutely right about victim impact statements. Some of those I've heard over the years you know children saying um to their mothers you know why's dad where's daddy can I can I ring him in heaven and all these sort of heart actually heartbreaking uh things you hear um that that really gets to me a lot uh but thank you very much keep up the good work of training the next generation of court reporters and thanks hope everybody comes back for my next episode of the Total Crime podcast