There’s an excellent article in The Critic magazine by Fred Sculthorp about the Mexican warts and all genre of tabloid newspaper stories called Nota roja. These stories are about the underbelly of Mexican society, the gangster murders, appalling crime and the everyday sometimes poverty linked tragedies. When I read Mr Sculthorp’s description of this genre my first thought went to the Victorian publications such as Illustrated Police News ’ which carried stories of crime and horror from Britain’s more murkier parts.

Mr Sculthorp pointed to the British organisation Court News UK as a modern British equivalent of the nota roja phenomenon as they are putting people in the press boxes of courts that might not have seen a journalist sitting in them for many years. As a former court reporter myself I’m exceedingly pleased to see someone as high profile as Mr Sculthorp highlight the work of Court News UK. I certainly agree that what goes on in Britain’s courts, especially outside of large cities are under-reported. I understand the reasons why, local newspapers have been financially decimated and the big news agencies like the Press Association (now PA Media) or Associated Press might not always be able to have a reporter in every court in the land so some stories might get missed. The days when a big court such as the Central Criminal Court would have four or more agencies covering cases all the time are long gone and court reporting is all the worse for it.

In the context of court reporting Mr Sculthorp said:

“For instance, who can forget the recent story that broke courtroom containment concerning the pair of illegal migrants from Afghanistan, who raped a woman by knifepoint as she and her boyfriend lay stargazing in a park in Barking? Here’s another: “son murders mother in Haringey” would barely bat an eyelid as a headline. But what if you found out that after he had beaten her to death, he continued to paint her toenails, turned the decomposing body in the master bedroom into a dedicated shrine and used her credit card to see Tina: The Tina Turner Musical?

Much of this detail only comes to light because a reporter is willing to sit through days and weeks of courtroom rigmarole, until they finally get a chance to jot down a sliver of British horror into their notebook. Curiously, as the country becomes more obsessed with crime and statistics, and indeed the waning sense of common decency, the trade of actually understanding the details, lives, places and stories behind these numbers is vanishing. “

It is stories like these, stories that might never reach the ears and eyes of the public that Court News UK specialise in. In my view agencies like Court News UK do the public a great service.

I was shocked a few years back when I returned to a courtroom Press Box for a stint at court reporting at Southwark Crown Court in London in order to cover one particular case how there was only one agency journalist available to cover all the cases that day at Southwark. This was a marked downturn from how things used to be. Back then there would have been two or more people just to cover the day to day cases with extra people coming in for the bigger more high profile cases.

There are still agencies that do a fair bit of court reporting such as SWNS which mostly cover stuff in London and Bristol who also do a great deal of good work but on the whole there is not many of the dedicated court correspondents that most national, regional and local newspapers used to employ.

Court News UK does a fabulous job of reporting from Britain’s courts and I’m very pleased to see Mr Sculthorp praising them.

I agree with Mr Sculthorp when he says that if we really want to know what is going on in our country then we need to sit in the courts or have reporters sit in courts for us.

Links

Mr Sculthorp’s article on court reporting with praise for Court News UK.

https://thecritic.co.uk/the-case-for-a-british-nota-roja/

Court News UK

https://courtnewsuk.co.uk/

Wiki page on Illustrated Police News

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Illustrated_Police_News