Davies, GL; Then, Shih-Ning --- "Why the Public Needs a Court Information Officer" [2004] ALRCRefJl 19; (2004) 85 Australian Law Reform Commission Reform Journal 9

---

Reform Issue 85 Summer 2004/05

This article appeared on pages 9–11 of the original journal.

Why the public needs a Court Information Officer

By GL Davies and SN Then*

The public has the right to know the truth of what is happening in the courts. They get most of their information about the courts from the media.

Yet much of what they read and see and hear is wrong. How can that be? There are a number of reasons. Many of them are not the fault of journalists. And the problem is readily solved.

The risk of error: the need to explain complex cases in simple terms

Some trials and some judgments are extremely complex. It would be impossible for a journalist, without help, to summarise their effect for a 10 or 20 second grab on the evening news. And it is almost as difficult to report the effect of such a judgment in an article in the next day’s newspaper. Take for example what happens in our Court on a judgment day; that is a day on which the Court delivers a number of judgments (usually between five and 15) in cases which have been too complex to deliver judgment at the end of the hearing.

Some of these judgments may be of 100 or more pages. They may involve complex facts and complex questions of law. Very few court journalists are skilled in the law. After all that is not their profession. Moreover they have a deadline. There are bound to be mistakes, some of them fundamental ones. This is a problem that all courts in Australia, including the High Court, have had to deal with. Long and complex judgments, which have significant legal implications, can often be inaccurately described in a couple of sentences by the media. For example, the outcome of the 204 page judgment from the High Court in the case of Wik Peoples v State of Queensland¹ was inaccurately described under one newspaper headline as, ‘Aboriginal tribes won the right to seek ownership of more than 40 per cent of Australia in a High Court decision yesterday’.²

The consequence is that the public are receiving an unbalanced and at times unduly unfavourable account of what occurs in the courts. Public faith in the judicial system is unlikely to be maintained unless this balance is redressed.

The problem here, of course, is one of communication; of communicating complex matters more simply. One way of doing this, in the case of a judgment, is for the court to produce a summary, in simple language, of the effect of a judgment that is complex or one of public importance. This would avoid the risk of error and of misinterpretation of the effect of the judgment.

However no Australian court has the human resources to do this in all or even most cases. In some courts that work is done, in more significant cases, by a Court Information Officer, in consultation with a judge or a judge’s associate. That is one reason why the public benefits by the appointment of such a person. It substantially reduces the risk of error and consequent misinterpretation of what a court has said.

The risk of sensationalism

There is always a risk of sensationalism in cases of public interest; especially criminal trials involving bizarre behaviour or young children; or cases involving public figures. There is a temptation, especially if the reporting journalist does not fully understand what has happened in the day’s proceedings, to report only the most sensational event of the day, whether it is relevant to the outcome of the trial or not.

This may have a number of detrimental effects. It may distort public opinion about the rights and wrongs in a trial. It may wrongly harm the reputation of a litigant or a witness. It may even cause a trial to abort, requiring it to start again with all the additional cost, frustration and, in some cases, mental anguish to witnesses such as complainants. All of these can lead to the public losing faith in the judicial system.

A Court Information Officer could be at hand, before a trial commenced, or at the end of a day’s proceedings, to brief journalists and answer questions about the trial, thereby avoiding the risk of inadvertent sensationalism. That is a second reason for a Court Information Officer.

What judges do

There is a surprising lack of knowledge by the public of what judges do. This was brought home to the first author when he was first appointed. A non-lawyer friend, whom he thought was well informed on most things, asked him what time he went into court in the morning. He said ‘10.15’. ‘When do you finish?’ the friend asked. He said ‘4.15’. To his astonishment, the friend said: ‘That’s a cushy job’.

The last remark assumes, of course, that a judge has done no work on a case before it starts in court, does no work on it outside court hours while it proceeds and yet is able to give judgment on it immediately when it finishes. It also assumes that the judge has no other work to do.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Before a judge starts to hear a case he or she may spend hours, days or even weeks preparing for it; reading transcripts, pleadings, affidavits and other documents already filed, working out from those what appear to be the issues in dispute, studying the law on those issues and forming some tentative views about the various ways in which it may be decided. Those views will then be modified by what occurs in the course of proceedings including by evidence and submissions of counsel. And at the end of the proceeding the judge will generally require time to consider and write a judgment giving a decision in the case and the reasons for that decision, for every party, especially the losing party, is entitled to know why the judge has decided in the way he or she has.

A major task of a Court Information Officer is to inform the public about the judicial process; how judges go about their work, why a judge may sometimes be bound to arrive at a decision which may be unpopular and why, for example, a prison sentence which appears unduly low may not be, when all the facts are fully explained.

The public need to know what judges do. A Court Information Officer fulfills that need.

The role of a Court Information Officer

Around Australia the responsibilities of Court Information Officers in different courts vary depending on particular issues that need to be addressed. Generally, however, their role is to facilitate communication between the courts, the media and the public. Court Information Officers are independent of the media and are usually answerable to a judicial officer in the courts. Their role is not that of public relations officers, designed to improve how the court is portrayed in the media. Rather it is to provide accurate information on, and provide an insight into, the workings of the court.

This is done primarily through answering media enquiries, educating new journalists on court reporting, liaising between the media and judicial officers when there are requests for interviews or comments and also providing accurate, easily comprehensible information to the general public on court proceedings. Perhaps more importantly the Court Information Officer is at hand to explain orders and judgments and is able to relay to the media the consequences of suppression orders and the like. The presence of Court Information Officers in courts has caused the number of aborted trials due to prejudicial reporting to decrease.³

The Court Information Officer can, in consultation with judges, also provide summaries of cases that are expected to excite media attention, as well as those of particular public or legal importance. As the Honourable Daryl Williams said, ‘The more significant a judicial decision, the more important it is that the community, including the media, understands that decision’.⁴ As mentioned before, making these summaries available to the media would go a long way to preventing inaccurate reporting of legal proceedings. An Australian Institute of Judicial Administration report recommended that a Court Information Officer should be appointed in all jurisdictions.⁵

Why are Queenslanders alone in not having a Court Information Officer?

Every major court in Australia, other than Queensland courts, has a Court Information Officer. Their appointment in other state and Commonwealth courts has been widely praised by media organisations, other public organisations and judges. Some courts have gone even further by establishing court-media committees as a forum for discussion and to address issues that may arise between the courts and media.⁶

On a number of occasions over recent years the Chief Justice of Queensland has asked the government for the appointment of a Court Information Officer. The request has had the wide support of media representatives. Nothing has been done.

Why are Queenslanders, alone in Australia, deprived of consistently accurate information of what is happening in the courts? The answer is known only to the government.

* The Hon Justice Geoffrey Davies AO is a Judge of the Court of Appeal, Supreme Court of Queensland.

Shih-Ning Then LLB (Hons), BSc, is Associate to the Hon Justice GL Davies AO.

Endnotes

1. Wik Peoples v State of Queensland (1996) 187 CLR 1.

2. K Sweetman, ‘Farm leases now a land claim target’ The Daily Telegraph, 24 December 1996, 6 as cited in RP Austin, ‘The High Court and the Community’ (1998) 4 TJR 27, 29.

3. B Teague, ‘The Courts, the Media and the Community—a Victorian Perspective’ (1995) 5 JJA 22, 24.

4. D Williams ‘The Courts and the Media: What Reforms are Needed and Why’ (1998) UTS Law Review 1, The Courts and the Media, 22.

5. S Parker, Courts and the Public, (1998) AIJA, 86-88 and 164. This report refers to the position of a Court Information Officer as a Media Liaison Officer.

6. New South Wales Law Reform Commission, Contempt by Publication, Report 100 (2003), [15.21].