Family Court Reporting Watch Roundup

• Correcting, clarifying or commenting on media reports of family court cases

• Explaining or commenting on published judgments of family court cases

• Highlighting other transparency news

MEDIA (MIS)REPORTS OF FAMILY COURT CASES

The Daily Mail – Nurse’s one-year-old son is taken from her care after she let him sit in a Bob The Builder toy car that was ‘inappropriate’ for his age. The Mail rejected our complaint about this headline and we decided to take the matter to the regulator, IPSO. We’ve now heard back from IPSO and have sent in a further response. We’ll comment further when we can (when the decision is published):

 

Transparency Positive 

Comments of Mrs Justice Gwynneth Knowles usefully reminded that it’s important for council competence to be made transparent through publication of family court judgments (where warranted) as well as failures. See paragraph 67 of A Local Authority v A Mother and others. (See also this twitter thread discussion on why we publish judgments):

 

Linkless

The Daily Mail (via the Press Association); BBC News; Care Appointments; The Times – Mail Online reported the judgments from fact finding and welfare decisions in High Court care proceedings without linking readers to them. BBC News (local) reported Bristol City Council reversing cuts to SEN/ Disabilities for young people after a judicial review claim with no link to the published judgment. Care Appointments reported the published judgment from a care proceedings decision (critical of an unnamed council and the court), without linking readers to that judgment; The Times reported this care proceedings decision without a link to the judgment:

 

Linker of the week

We’ve seen no mainstream news publisher link readers from their report of a family court decision to the online judgment for weeks.

 

NEWLY PUBLISHED CASES FOR EXPLANATION OR COMMENT

Re Z (A Child: Care Proceedings: Separate Representation)  2018 – We explained the judgment from this decision in 14-year-old instructs his own solicitor in care proceedings. See  Separate representation of a child: A thorny problem from SuespiciousMinds and A child’s understanding to instruct a solicitor direct from DB Family Law for further analysis:

 

IN OTHER TRANSPARENCY NEWS

The new legal bloggers pilot – Similar access for legal bloggers to the family courts as for accredited journalists starts under pilot on Monday. See Legal Bloggers are go! See also our dedicated legal bloggers page for information and key documents that will be useful for any lawyer who wants to attend under the pilot, attend under the Transparency Project umbrella, blog about it at @seethrujustice, or contribute to efforts to evaluate the pilot:

 

The Cairncross Review of sustainable journalism – The Transparency Project responded. See Is high quality journalism sustainable? Our evidence to the Cairncross Review with links to our response and some other responses to the review:

 

Child Protection Conference 2018 – The write up is here with links to most of the presentations and the new Transparency Project Guidance Note on Experts launched at the conference:

 

The Open Family Court project – Louise Tickle (freelance journalist and TP member) announced next steps for the Open Family Court. See the blog post New Call for Openness for how to get in touch to blog for the project or attend a multi disciplinary workshop or tweet at @openfamilycourt:

 

Bar Council Legal Reporting Awards – The 2018 awards launched in recognition of the media’s role in promoting better understanding of the law in the context of public interest law and justice issues. Open to print/online and broadcast journalists (blogs excluded). Details here:

 

Feature pic: Courtesy of Flickr Lauri Heikkinen via Creative Commons licence – with thanks