Williams, George --- "The High Court and the Media" [1999] UTSLawRw 17; (1999) 1 University of Technology Sydney Law Review 136

Panel Discussion

CHRIS NASH: There has been a bit of discussion here about the need for responsible media access policies to the courts. David Anderson pointed out that in the United States the horse has already bolted and, for structural reasons of cross-media competition there, there is no such thing as responsibility any longer. There is, in fact, rampant freedom of speech.

I just might point out that there is a very distinguished tradition in North American liberal democratic theories, especially to do with communications, that suggests, in fact, freedom of the press is a very bad thing in terms of its impact on freedom of speech. What the freedom of the press does is give power to the media monopolies, or large media organizations, which then act not only through the professional ethics of their employees, which they control, but also through their own institutional corporate interests to stifle sometimes what might be seen as the voice of the people.

We have seen allegations of that in Australia recently with the Pauline Hanson phenomenon, where the media were locked in with the elites, who the people are criticizing. So Harold Innes, in particular, who many consider to be the most distinguished communication theorist in North America this century, suggests that freedom of the press was, in fact, an abrogation of a democratic right to the freedom of speech. With the internet what we are seeing is a rampant outbreak of freedom of speech. To me, that underlies the larger issue: that, really, the media and the courts, or the media and the justice system, can, to a large extent, work hand in hand in an informative or educational role vis-a-vis the public. I think that fails to recognize that there is a profound political tension between the media and the courts.

The courts--the third branch of government--are an arm of government and in democratic political theory, at least, the role of the press is, on behalf of the people, to challenge the excesses of government or, perhaps, to limit the excesses of government.

So the courts, just as the executive and the legislature, are, therefore, fair game for the media. In fact, it is the media's constitutional role. It is what their very right to freedom of the press depends upon--taking a distant and critical relationship to the courts.

Now the Westminster traditions in some ways disguise this because one is born a subject of the Crown. The various arms of government emanate from the Crown, at least in theory, which is quite different from government being of the people, by the people and for the people. So there is, I think, a difficulty under the Westminster system of actually grappling with what precisely the rights of people are, vis-a-vis the institutions which are constituted under the Westminster system. But there is no doubt that the political reality is there, and the One Nation phenomenon, where they attacked the media, the courts and the government, is all part of an elite and very real manifestation of that.

Tim Fischer, the Deputy Prime Minister's, call for installation of a "capital C conservative" onto the High Court was another instance of that political pressure being felt by politicians which they are then turning onto the other branch of government. So it seems to me it is absolutely important that there not be a woolly notion that the media and the courts can work easily together.

Our system of government, if you like, depends upon there being quite a profound political tension between the two.

KIMBERLEY ASHBEE: I was interested in Justice Teague's gradings for proceedings and televising of proceedings. My observations in terms of the Supreme Court in New South Wales are only three months old but, prior to that, having spent time with the Bar Association, the Law Society and a top tier law firm, I have an overall picture of all the players in the game and what roles they can play and improve on. Generally, I think the community's understanding of the whole court system show that courts seem to get sometimes unfairly criticized for some of the things that happened further down the food chain, if you like.

The gradings, I thought, were fair, but I don't think there is anything too hard that can't be done with planning, with consultation and having very strong professional working relationships with the media. I believe that the sentences that I have observed myself were actually right for broadcast because you have got a neat summary, if you like, of what has happened in the trial. Probably the sentences in jury trials are more interesting, and challenging--for the judiciary to explain how they have arrived at that particular sentence. However, on the other side, I think that journalists need to take particular care in really owning their story right through the whole process of writing, the subbing, what picture goes with it, and fighting strongly internally for that. I think that is very important.

You educate at the same time as doing that because it is your by-line that the judicial officers read and see and, whilst I will believe you about a subbing or a photograph you didn't know was going to accompany your story, and I will always pass that on, that is your reputation, if you like, and how you are seen in the eyes of the judicial officers.

Recently we had a judgment where a cautioning note was issued at the end--it should have been at the front, in my view--which said what a judgment wasn't. That was superb because it is exactly what the media thought it would be, and it turned out not to be that, so it was there in black and white. Of course, when I turn up for a judgment to be handed down they know something is on any way, so that worked very well.

CHRIS NASH: Jenny, do you want to add anything?

JENNY BROCKIE: Only that I find it rather depressing that I was asked to be here actually. The only real qualification I have for being here is that I am one of the few people who have managed to get cameras inside a courtroom. It was four years ago. For those of you who don't know, it was a feature-length documentary about Campbelltown Local Court, called "So Help Me God".

I think the point that Chris makes about the separation in this talk of co-operation between the media and the courts is a very good one. At one level, that is true. But at another level, it is essential that the respective roles are kept separate and there is a mutual respect for those roles.

When I set out to make a film in a Local Court, in a magistrate's court, the main reason was that it is or was where 90 per cent of court business was carried out and the "LA Law" image of court was very much people's television diet. It seemed to me that what really went on in Local Courts, in particular, was quite likely to be of considerable interest and also might surprise our audience.

I went to Ian Pike, who was then the Chief Magistrate in New South Wales, and explained to him that I wanted to make a feature-length film about the life of a courtroom, that I wanted to contextualize things like magistrates' decisions, and contextualize the whole court procedure by looking at not only what went on inside the courtroom itself but what went on in the Legal Aid Office and solicitor's office around the court and so on. He agreed it was a wonderful idea and said: "I think it is very unlikely you will find a magistrate to do it but, you know, go ahead and try". As it was, we approached dozens of magistrates. Only two were interested. Nearly all the others said they thought it was a fabulous idea for someone else to do and, in the end, I had several meetings with Kevin Flack, who was then the senior magistrate at Campbelltown Court, and he agreed very much along the lines that I think were appropriate for that film. Now, in a sense, that relationship was very dependent on our mutual regard for not stepping on one another's toes, if you like.

My biggest fear in making the film was, frankly, that I would find a magistrate who would say yes, but who would want to pick and choose the cases that we filmed. That seemed to me to be overstepping what I wanted my film to be, which was very much an overview of the life of a court over a period of six weeks.

As it turned out, Kevin Flack didn't do that but did lay down a condition that we would require consent from all the participating parties. His concern was that in opening the courtroom he did not want to invade people's privacy. I mean, this idea that a court is an open place is nonsense when the majority of people get their information from electronic media. You know, people do not go into courtrooms en masse and sit in the public gallery and that is part of the reason they don't understand how the legal system works. They rely on electronic media, and they rely on print media for coverage of court cases. So, it was interesting, in a sense, that this issue of privacy co-existed with the idea of an open court, but, indeed, it does. I was more than happy to agree to that because we felt, as filmmakers, that it would be inappropriate, I suppose, to go blasting in on a one-off basis and expose people to national television when there is not a prevailing culture that actually has courtrooms open to a television audience.

What ended up happening was that an extraordinary number of people agreed to be filmed. Written consents were obtained from everybody involved. Double consent forms were signed both for Legal Aid Office purposes and for the ABC's purposes. As a result, the film went to air and the sky didn't fall in. I mean it was not the end of the world that court proceedings made it onto television. I do find it depressing that while, as Justice Teague says, the question seems now to be not whether but how courts will be televised, it is still not happening. For all the talk, for all the conferences, for all the number of times this discussion has been had, by and large, I have yet to see a major trial covered by a television camera and put to air as a documentary, or whatever, after the event.

Now, it seems to me there are big transitional issues to think about. I think the whole issue of privacy is something that is quite complex and interesting in relation to this issue because I think we have a culture where court proceedings don't appear on television. When they do, those people do get singled out.

I just returned from the United States a couple of weeks ago and I have to say, while the horse has bolted, I had a fascinating conversation about the OJ Simpson trial with somebody over there who said that the most intriguing thing about it was discovering just how truly boring the legal system can be. This was because people were turning on their television day after day wanting something salacious and wonderful or exciting to happen and were finding that day after day, it was bogged down in legal argument.

There is an argument to say that a court TV network, while we might gasp and say "shock, horror" and "how outrageous" and "how exploitative that is", in a sense, if you are looking for contextualizing your court proceedings where you have ongoing coverage of court proceedings in all their boring glory, you are, in a sense, educating people much more to the system than you are if you are taking snippets out. So you can argue either way.

I guess it just seems to me that it is a discussion that has been had endlessly, that people are slowly coming to the view that perhaps it might be worth opening that door slightly. I would just sound a note of caution about respect. I don't think journalists want to tell judges how to do their job. I would be worried if judges started trying to dictate to journalists what particular aspects of the case they could cover for television. For example, if they, in fact, were prepared to agree in principle to the idea of coverage. Then you get into all that real messy territory of what do you single out, how do you safeguard against people being exploited, or whatever, but we have got to move on it. The most staggering thing to me at Campbelltown was the extent of ignorance these people had about the system they were about to walk through the doors into. They had no idea, half of them. The people who had never appeared in court before had no idea what was going to happen when they walked through those doors and I think that is a real worry.

LIZ JACKSON: We actually did think at one point about trying to do a "Four Corners" programme where we gained access to the court, but failed utterly when absolutely everybody refused to allow us in.

It seems to me that there are the easy things and there are the hard things. I mean, the easy things that we could all agree on would be a public information officer for the High Court of Australia. About five weeks ago, I rang up the High Court of Australia wanting a number for Sir Anthony Mason and no one there was able to tell me. The conversation went something like: "Sir Anthony Mason? You want to know where Sir Anthony Mason is?", "Yes, he was the Chief Justice. You know, the one before last". There was no one actually--you might think that is a very minor point--who answered the phone who was able to actually give me that number. Far more important was, I think, in terms of getting that position and the difference it makes is an acknowledgment by the Court that there is a problem.

It is fantastically important that people who are judges go on a populist medium (even if it is an elitist programme) and actually talk to the punters about the issues.

That, for instance, in the case of persuading Sir Anthony Mason, was something that was fantastically difficult but for which I think he ought to be acknowledged. He was actually prepared to go on television and answer questions, albeit as he was walking in, and saying: "I don't know if I can talk about Mabo." I said: "Hang on, you've got to. Everybody wants to know about it."

Excuse me for relating that. But when push came to shove, he was prepared to articulate of his own volition. If you look back at the interview, he was prepared to say why a judgment like that was important and was prepared to answer a question like: "When it comes down to implied rights, I have picked up the Constitution and I can't find any here. Did you make it up?". He was prepared to answer a fairly direct television question and I thought he acquitted himself admirably, and, as Jenny said, the sky didn't fall in.

At the end of the program, the High Court--and correct me if I am wrong--was happy with it and felt that it was a fine thing to have done and ought to have been done. As I say, my job is often persuading people that it actually is really quite important to break down the sense that there is an elite, which I accept does not just constitute the High Court, and journalists like myself find ourselves uncomfortably classed in that elite.

I also wanted to quickly touch on the fact that there is not always going to be, as I think Chris and Jenny have alluded to, a congruence of interests. I think certainly there is something that remains to be discussed about what is proper to be talked about in the media. I don't think there is agreement between the courts and the media about what it is proper to be talked about, and I think that comes down to a different view about how we go about, for instance, maintaining confidence in the judiciary. I am slap bang against this in terms of the recent programme that "Four Corners" did in which we finally ended up, after a certain debate about what the programme should actually be about, looking at the long, close attention to the case of Justice Ian Callinan. In terms of an agreement among the courts and among lawyers generally about what was proper to go on television and be prepared to say, we encountered the full range from people who weren't, for instance, judicial officers, who would not allow us to film in foyers of courts, where some stage of the proceeding might have happened in that foyer in that court.

We were not allowed to film barristers' admissions (for the sake of discretion they will remain unnamed); just where the barristers walk in and say: "I hereby swear a public duty to the court." This is obviously absolutely critical to a discussion of that case to understand that that is what baby barristers do, they swear a duty to the court. That wasn't on.

I think right through the legal profession and right up to the very top in the political area of this, there was a general disappointment that we should even look at this case, that it was simply inappropriate and would undermine the standing of the judiciary. This was expressed to me at the highest levels, that this was simply something that they were extremely disappointed that we were even looking at.

But let me say also, some people were, despite the imposition, prepared to at least elucidate what were the general principles and I would like to express my gratitude to those people. I do feel that the sky didn't fall in as a result and, without trying to be too pompous, that it was fair.

So all I am saying is that we can agree that certain things are easy but certain things are hard and the hard things, it seems to me, are what is proper for the media to talk about and what is proper for judges to engage in. There is not an agreement about what it is proper to talk about in terms of maintaining public confidence in the judiciary. I think you may have to be a bit bolder in the current climate where, as I say, we are dealing with a perception of elitism and self serving mysticism.

ROD TIFFEN: When lawyers and journalists talk about increased media access to the courts, the emphasis is overwhelmingly on the external interface--how they can communicate better outwards.

What tends to be neglected somewhat are the internal workings of the courts and how these may contribute to the problem. A related point I would like to make here is that when people talk of law reform, overwhelmingly they are talking about a matter of reforming the content of the law. It seems to me that a lot of the procedures are not to do with the content of the law but its procedures. Here I think the most crucial thing of all is simply the matter of delay. Let me give you a couple of examples.

In April 1997, I strongly believed in Senator Colston's right to a presumption of innocence. I thought it would have been a very dangerous precedent to expel him from the Senate without having gone through a criminal trial. Eighteen months later I find it just ridiculous that that trial has not happened, that we are still talking about a presumption of innocence and that a senator elected in 1993 for Labor may be crucial to fulfilling the Government's mandate.

I also would like to make the point, for example, about one of the best pieces of reporting in Australian current affairs history, namely the "Four Corners" programme, "The Moonlight State". It went to air in May 1987. Subsequent legal action by one of the Bellino brothers, the gangsters exposed or some of the gangsters exposed in that programme, finally finished in June this year, eleven years and one month after the program went to air. Five Queensland Premiers came and went during the time that that court case dragged on, and a sixth one departed about three weeks later. The ABC won every step of those legal proceedings except for one rather bizarre High Court judgment, where several justices seemed to me that they were better editors than the people at the ABC.

I would like to know the cost, including the hidden costs of staff time, on cases here for the ABC which they have won. Let's be clear about this. These are cases the ABC has won that have cost them so much. Their legal fees now must be well over half a million dollars. I hope that Mr Bellino doesn't go bankrupt before he can pay.

Now, one of the problems, I think, with cases like this, is that the stop-start nature of political cases means that the reports to the public and the public's capacity to form a coherent view of what is occurring are almost nil unless they are dedicated researchers. Reports go on, with daily reports while the court is sitting each day, with different witnesses, giving different pictures, and then the case may disappear for several months. It is very hard to get reports that integrate the proceedings and I don't think this sort of haphazard, erratic, unpunctual procedure helps the public's right to know at all.

It is very difficult at times, I think, to distinguish legitimate claims of the media as a vehicle of public information from their self interested grandstanding. The example which came to my mind today was, some years ago I was in Perth doing some work on WA Inc., and that Royal Commission, which was exemplary in its relations with journalists, held one meeting, a press conference between the three judges, an all-in press conference. Unfortunately for Howard Sadler, this was at 10 a.m. in the morning, which clashed with his programme. He then wanted the judges to meet him individually, separately and, in a discussion with another member (the breakfast announcer on his station), their refusal to meet him individually was referred to as a Goebbels-like tactic. So this sort of grandstanding, I think, is an enormous inhibition in trying to get rational discussion of these issues.

The last two issues I mentioned are about what I think are weaknesses of media reporting. The first is to do with the lack of editorial imagination, especially the lack of an effort to produce--and maybe this runs into contempt of court problems, I'm not sure--integrated reports that try to interrelate the testimony of different witnesses, sometimes heard weeks and months apart, that no casual readers of a newspaper could ever hold in their minds properly.

The second and the last point I would like to make is the moral simplicity of much of our media. In commercial broadcasting, current affairs in particular, in tabloid newspapers to some extent, marketing people have discovered that uncertainty is uncomfortable. If you can offer your audience certainty, if you can offer them a picture that the truth is simple, that virtue is on one side and vice is on the other, then they go away feeling much better. Unfortunately, of course, truth is the primary casualty in that sort of reporting. And I might just leave it at that.

Questions and Comments From the Floor

KIRSTEN EDWARDS (Associate Lecturer, University of Technology, Sydney): I think, at the end of the day, when you get past some practical things, there is a fundamental conflict between the role of the courts and what we try to achieve in trying to make it more accessible to the public.

We have heard a lot about practical things, and certainly a lot of these are great: the web page is great, the media officer is great, maybe a bit of court TV, maybe a few more joint judgments, more people who know what they are talking about but can also communicate it in an accessible way to the public. But there are also certain things that the courts just cannot do.

One commentator pointed out that courts sometimes release six judgments in one day. But you can't expect the High Court to stagger the release of judgments and have people withholding on their legal and civil rights in order that the media can digest them more comfortably. You also can't expect them to be contactable, like when you try to contact Anthony Mason. I know that if I called the ABC and asked for Geoffrey Robertson--because, you know, he used to be there a while ago--they would probably be equally oblique as to how I could get hold of him. And there are certain other practical difficulties, things like the delay that was criticized in the Wik decision. There are so many appeal books to digest.

The High Court is not accessible to the public ever, no matter how much we try to make it simple, because it is the most legally sophisticated institution that you will ever come across and you can give people plain English summaries, you can explain to them the role of the people, you can explain to them what the case is about, you can have a law degree, and you will still have a lot of trouble following what is going on.

I sat in the High Court for the year, having read every single thing that came before me and I didn't know what was going on, so I think, perhaps, we should give up certain expectations that anybody is ever going to be able to walk into the High Court and understand what is going on because it is so complicated. It is so difficult and the judges don't want to make it easier. They don't want to make their judgments shorter, and they don't want to make their judgments more accessible to the people because they consider themselves legal experts. They don't consider that that is their role and they won't.

I agree with Liz Jackson that when we do these little things the sky doesn't fall in, but there is a huge legal backlash whenever a judge tries to be more populist. There is a huge legal backlash whenever a judge tries to be accessible to the public and they have to bear that on their own. They do believe that the sky will fall in if they start having to think, "Maybe I should only write a 20-page judgment and release it before 4 p.m. so the journalists will get hold of it." So it seems to me that maybe we should be giving up in a way on the High Court apart from those commendable practical initiatives that are under way and start doing what Jenny did, and just get to the magistrates courts, the District Court, where real justice is done about real people. There will always be a perception of elite when we talk about things that are just so intellectually sophisticated that lawyers can't understand themselves, and that is just inevitable.

Maybe we should give up on that because I don't think it is ever going to be fixed and I don't think lawyers will ever be able to write judgments on the most sophisticated legal issues that are immediately accessible. Maybe we should forget about the High Court and just go back to these District Courts and show how real justice operates on real people, as it is more comforting.

GEORGE WILLIAMS: I think that is a failure to acknowledge that the High Court has itself made great steps. I mean, you might as well say they have done nothing in recent years and they have. To say there is nothing that can be done about the High Court is to say what the High Court has done in recent years in terms of an effort to make itself more accessible and an effort to get out there and get more comprehension has not been worth the trouble. It has done things.

ROD CAMPBELL: I cover the High Court all the time. I don't think you need to give up because at least one judge of the High Court has proved that it can be done--Justice Michael Kirby. He has not written shorter judgments but he has certainly written judgments that are a delight to read as a journalist. He actually has headings. He actually says: "these are the facts, this is the legislation, these are the legal principles, this is how I apply them and this is my conclusion". He is a delight to read. He gets reported by journalists all the time because of that. So it can be done.

So far as expecting the High Court to stagger its judgments, I think leadership from the Chief Justice might have something to do with it. One of the horror days of all horror days was--I can't remember the year now--but the High Court handed down four, five interrelated judgments all on the acquisition of property other than on just terms and my recollection is that there were four judgments; three went one way and one went the other. The three that the plaintiffs lost were 16 individual judgments. The other one, which was Georgiadis I think, had seven or five.

There were something like 21 separate judgments to be digested. What it was, in fact, was one news story at the end of it. A couple of journalists woke up to the fact that they were all about the same section of the Constitution. I really would like to see some more guidance from the Chief Justice. If you do an analysis of minority judgments and separate judgments, you see an extraordinary correlation between judges who can't ever manage to get a majority and those who are capable of writing joint judgments, but some Chief Justices are more successful in encouraging it than others.

JENNY BROCKIE: Could I just say that I agree with what Liz was saying about you should not give up, but I do sympathize with what you are saying. I spent six weeks at Campbelltown. I heard Kevin Flack referred to as "Your Honour". I saw people jump up and say "objection!" because all they had seen was "LA Law". I heard him called "your Holiness" by a litigant.

You have a fundamental problem in a society where people are appearing in a court and have not a clue about court procedure, how it works or what they are supposed to do, or where they are supposed to sit or stand, or who takes their turn. So I agree with Liz but I think what we have got to do is attack the lot, have a go at the lot, and start recognizing that courts are not the private domain of judges and magistrates. They are supposed to be public places, and that seems to me one of the fundamental problems, that there is a kind of legal culture that has almost created this privacy about the whole procedure which is presided over by the person up behind the big bench who really has the say about this thing called the electronic media, which is so much more evil in its intentions and its potential than a tabloid newspaper. Come on! We are about to head into the next millennium!

CHRIS NASH: I would just like to comment, too, that the judgment of the High Court that landed it in the most trouble was, as George described, absolute black letter law--Wik. It was absolutely imperative for them to respond politically to the sorts of attacks that Robert McClelland talked about. You know, it just was not an option for them to sit there. Something had to be done. It was a profound constitutional battle.

SPEAKER: I was interested in some of the remarks that Justice Teague made in regards to the electronic media in the courts, the television in the courts. What would he think about the televising of royal commissions? I was actually in a royal commission for two years. As a consequence of the barrister addressing the commissioner on the evidence, that barrister was actually taken before the disciplinary tribunal of the Bar Association on his remarks about one of the witnesses.

He said things like: "He is redolent of the John Cleese character". He shrugged his shoulders and said: "well, a few people died. So what!". And they took offence at that. There was a three day hearing at the disciplinary tribunal. Because there was no actual video of the witness's attitude, they had difficulty seeing what the barrister was getting at. He was talking about the witness's attitude and I feel that if things go to appeal, or in this case it went to the Bar Association, that it is important that there is some kind of a record on video tape of what the witness's attitude and demeanour was.

JUSTICE TEAGUE: Perhaps two things. One concerns royal commissions. Essentially, it will be a matter for the royal commission to determine the appropriate practice to be adopted in front of the commission. It is very much an individual thing. Whatever it decides to do is not going to affect other people so it may be relatively easier to be more permissive in relation to that sort of situation, but it will depend upon, I would have thought, the making of the right sort of approach at the right time.

The second matter concerns video recording of the proceedings. In fact, substantial research in Victoria has suggested if cameras are placed in the right way with split screens and so on, it is the most cost-effective way of providing a record of proceedings for the use of transcript and so on.

Chief Justice Black probably can say what is going to happen, at least in the new Federal Court in Melbourne, but I think that is the way to go, based on the Victorian research. In fact, in a significant number of courtrooms in Victoria now, the transcript is effectively provided, even in remote locations--Geelong, Mildura and so on--by the four cameras that are set up in the courtroom where the image is relayed back to Melbourne, the transcript is provided in Melbourne and sent back if necessary through other channels. But it may be that that will give rise to possibilities in the near future as to the way in which that sort of record can be made available. In fact, that particular record was used in contempt proceedings recently in relation to an accused who performed badly immediately prior to the judge coming into court.

ANDREW KENYON: Just a brief comment on the reporting of the High Court-District Court-magistrate's court issue. I can understand how reporting the legal changes made by a High Court judgment can be difficult. It is difficult to get a concise summary and to get that out into the media in a good way. But there is an aim that is the same for reporting the High Court or the District Court, televising, doing documentaries, whatever, which is about the public understanding of the legal process.

The High Court has a particular constitutional role. It may well be that particular efforts that the High Court has made, and will continue to make, will be very important in clarifying that role among the general population, just as documentaries at the District Court or magistrate's court level can be very important in helping people realise our courts don't look quite like "LA Law".

SYLVIA CRIVEN (Public Relations Manager, Courts Administration Authority in South Australia): I would like to say that there is very much a popular interest and demand for knowledge about the courts in South Australia. You may not know about this but "Today Tonight" filmed a documentary in the magistrate's court. It went for an hour and when it was screened on a Friday, just before the footie, it had 210,000 viewers, according to their ratings, and we had such a lot of tremendous feedback from the communit. As you say, Jenny, they had no idea what they were going to come to terms with and that followed a sentencing, it followed some of the preliminary work in the solicitor's office, so the audience was able to see the legal process at various stages in a sort of a piecemeal fashion and, as you know, we haven't done a complete court case. But there certainly was a demand.

CHRIS NASH: Other questions?

SUSANNAH LOBEZ: I would like to make a brief comment about the relative merits of gavel-to-gavel coverage, which is literally from start to finish in a court case, à la court TV in the United States, and edited documentaries like, "six weeks in the life of the magistrates court" or what we have done with the "Law Report", a day in the life of the magistrate. Lots of those have been done, as Sylvia has said. I think that is going to be a really big issue. I could not help wondering in the previous session whether if we had gavel-to-gavel coverage, we just went out on a dedicated network--perhaps when digitalisation comes we will have that--where everyone would be, literally, like in the old days, sitting in the back of the court knitting, watching the daily grind through the courts. Maybe that would alleviate some of the difficulties about commentators getting it wrong or the wrong slant or, you know, the mistakes in the reporting, et cetera.

The other thing I have to say is that it takes an awful lot of smooching. It was in 1993 when I first started at the "Law Report" that I met Chief Justice Anthony Mason down in Tasmania, at a conference, and he had just come back from England a little bit concerned about illegitimate recording in England, and it was in that context that I said to him: "hey, how about an interview?" and it took, until May 1994 to actually achieve that with all the negotiating about how it might happen.

Now, that was because it was a one-off and we had to set the terms. Chief Justice Doyle will agree that from the first time when we spoke about court radio, and I think I spoke to Justice Olsson first, it was nearly 18 months by the time Chief Justice Doyle and I had both organized the guidelines and found the case and worked out how all the practicalities would be resolved.

I know that Justice Teague said collectivism is the way to go but I am damned if I am going to put 18 months of my own time and make that available to every other judge who requires these kind of precautions. I just urge those members of the judiciary who are here to go to their Chief Justices committees or their AIJA meetings and say: "listen, we need to do some work, too. We need to work out what is a fair deal here". I think things will progress much more happily and, next time we all meet, Jenny won't be so depressed.

GEORGE WILLIAMS: Sir Ninian Stephen has supported the idea of television in the High Court and, indeed, all the time. He seems supportive of some idea like High Court cable. I'm not sure it would be a big ratings winner but a former High Court judge has certainly seen that as a good idea.

The High Court itself has television cameras already for internal consumption. The problem is they are in black and white and you might have a problem of people thinking they are watching re-runs of "Lost in Space" or something like that, I suppose. All I am trying to say is, yes, there has been support from a former High Court judge and, yes, it could be done, but I can't see any great dangers for the High Court in this. The main thing is, well, would anybody watch it?

SPEAKER: But that is not the point, I don't think. I mean, I think whether it rates or not, frankly, is not the problem that everyone here is facing.

PATRICK KEYZER: It depends who pays for it: the funding. The governments of the day don't want to give extra funding to the courts to assist them in developing public education media strategies. The courts, of course, are doing more with less. They have more litigants, and it is a time that has been very difficult for them over the last few years. They are feeling a little embattled.

JENNY BROCKIE: At the same time, Liz is right. I mean, she has tried to film a case from go to whoa for "Four Corners". I have been interested in filming a case from go to whoa. We are not getting anywhere.

SPEAKER: I think there is probably a problem of goodwill in some jurisdictions toward this sort of thing but I think there is an issue of resources for public education media. I think the idea of one-off interviews, documentaries and engagements with different courts and different jurisdictions has progressed a lot in the last few years. We have a High Court documentary. Liz has interviewed Sir Anthony Mason. Maxine McHugh interviewed Sir Gerard Brennan and Chief Justice Doyle has been on talkback radio. So we have these developments over the last few years and people are starting to sit up and take notice of various jurisdictions. But, if we are looking at longer term public education media strategies, I think a lot of the courts are, quite rightly, saying to the executive government, "If you want us to extend ourselves, you are going to have to pay us so that we can do this."

[1] Associate Professor of Media, University of Technology, Sydney and Director, Australian Centre for Independent Journalism; Session 3 Panel Chair.

[2] Acting Public Information Officer, Supreme Court of New South Wales.

[3] ABC Television.

[4] "Four Corners" programme, ABC Television.

[5] Associate Professor, Department of Government and Public Administration, University of Sydney.