The Gazette 1995

GAZETTE

MAY/JUNE 1995

| The most difficult stories to pick up are the ex partes which are not listed and where neither side is anxious for . publicity. Some counsel are adept at picking a time and court when they believe reporters will not be around. It's a constant concern for journalists to try and pick up on such cases at an early stage, perhaps by following up the Four Courts rumour machine or by chatting to court officials who are | almost unfailingly helpful. i i Each morning, at about nine o'clock, I discuss the day's potential stories with the RTE news editor and a decision is made as to which ones merit coverage. On most days, a single story will stand out as being the most newsworthy. If, exceptionally, there are two or three stories beginning at the same time which must be covered, a reporter may be sent down from Donnybrook to liaise with me and split the workload. j Not infrequently, no single case stands out as exceptional and, on such | occasions, it's a matter of watching several cases at once until one of them produces a story. The average day of this legal affairs correspondent begins the night before, with consideration of needs of the next day's early morning radio i bulletins. I might prepare an overnight audio package for the 8am and 9am i bulletins, previewing a major case that's due to open, or covering a story with a midnight embargo (such as the publication of a report by the Law Reform Commission). My day in court may begin with a 10am reserved judgment, with the | 10.30 callover in the High Court or | Circuit Court, or with the opening of a trial at 1 lam. The first major deadline | is for the 1pm radio and television bulletins, although exceptionally I may file copy with the RTE news desk for the 1 lam or noon headlines on radio. Since the demise of Century ! Radio, the competition to be first with ; a story is not as fierce, and my main | rivals are now the evening j newspapers, i Although I have my own office only ' five minutes' walk away from the

Four Courts, on Merchant's Quay, it's too far to go while a case is running. If I am covering just one story (on a good day!), I will file copy by mobile phone from outside the court, and possibly do a phone report for 2FM at the same time. One of my most difficult tasks is to try and make sense of a case or a judgment in the short period between my arrival in court and my departure to prepare my package for the lunchtime bulletin. In the case of the Emerald Meats judgment, for example, Mr Justice Costello began giving judgment at 10.30am and finished at 12.40pm. Before I went into court that day, I had no idea whatsoever who or what Emerald Meats was. It wasn't a story I had ever covered before. But I had to assimilate and comprehend a judgment lasting two hours and ten minutes, and then - from shorthand notes, within about ten minutes - produce a one minute synopsis of the judgment for radio and television. Fortunately, the judgments of the President of the High Court are models of clarity and - unlike some judges - he does not speak in a whisper, so I had no difficulty hearing and understanding the main points of the decision. Occasionally a judgment may be so obscure that the ratio decidendi is difficult to discern. That can result in misleading reports, which concentrate on the wrong central issue. In the United States and Canada, the courts employ liaison officers who assist journalists by providing advance information about judgments, with synopses of the decisions and off-the- record briefings about the importance and relevance of each judgment. Such a service would be an invaluable addition to the Irish courts and would help prevent erroneous or unbalanced coverage. The cost of such a service would be far less than the current cost of trials aborted after several days because of prejudicial newspaper stories. Having reduced the case or judgment to a comprehensible and comprehensive minimum, my first task is to ensure that the story is filed.

If I have time, I return to my office, where I have a computer and modem linked to RTE's Newstar computer system. If I don't have time for that, I file the copy by phone. Apart from the news, other programmes, such as the Pat Kenny Show, may be looking for an interview with me. Again, if I have time, I do my audio for the News At One from the outside broadcast unit in my office. The OB offers studio-quality sound, while a telephone report may sound like a bowl of Rice Krispies on a bad day! For the television package, pictures are obviously essential. This may involve asking a crew to shoot background pictures (for example of a crime scene), requesting the news library to produce file material of the personalities or places involved or booking a crew to shoot pictures before and after the court hearing. Sometimes people are happy to walk into court for the news crew. Too often, though, people involved in court cases (particularly criminal cases) do not wish to be filmed, and the crew is forced to follow the subjects until they leave the precincts of the court and can be filmed without risk of contempt. Unfortunately, such a course of action is not without personal risk and my crew and I have been threatened on occasions too numerous to mention! Until April of this year, cameras had never been allowed into a sitting court, so, on occasion, there are simply no pictures available to cover a story. In that case, I fall back on the old reliables of the exteriors of the Four Courts from 1,001 different angles! (Even such apparently innocuous pictures are not without risk: on one occasion, while on our way to film from a rooftop opposite the Four Courts, the crew and I found ourselves stuck in the lift of a building under construction, with nobody around. Fortunately I had my mobile phone and was able to summon help!) Having shot any background pictures, I then write a television script and do a voiceover and piece-to-camera, ' normally on the quays. That's sent

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