Terror plot: Are US sources more reliable?
Posted by
Martin Stabe
on 18 August 2006 at 17:17
Tags: Journalism, Media Law
Speaking on CNN’s media criticism programme Reliable Sources (now available as a vodcast) correspondent John Voss noted that US sources were providing much of his information about the alleged plot to bring down aircraft with liquid explosives.
Voss said: “What has been interesting about covering this alleged terror plot has been that a lot of the information that we’ve been getting has been coming from US sources. It’s been almost impossible to get anything out of UK police or law enforcemnt agencies. It was a similar case when I was here just over a year ago covering the 7/7 Underground bombings. Once again, all of the information — or most of it anyway — was coming from the United States.”
Indeed, last summer, ABC News first published x-ray pictures of the nail bombs the 7/7 plotters had left at Luton airport.The American network had obtained the pictures from US law enforcement sources. Fearful of prejudicing a future trial, British police asked media not to publish the pictures. American media outlets were also the first to show the insides of the bombed Underground carriages, and considerably more was known about the suspect who was arrested in Italy.
Voss told Reliable Sources that British police had explained that this was down to different policing techniques, with British police having much wider scope for domestic surviellance than their American counterparts but that this was coupled with a much greater degree of scrutiny in court.
In fact, it probably has a lot more to do with British police concern for the Contempt of Court Act 1981, which makes it a crime to publish material that could prejudice a fair trial for the suspects. Last Thursday evening, Scotland Yard warned newspapers not to reveal the suspects’ names. Of course they were promptly revealed by the Bank of England the next day. Lord Goldsmith later warned “all parties” to show “considerable restraint” about revealing information that could prejudice a trial. That’s what the New York Times told its readers:
… Britain has far stricter contempt-of-court laws intended to prevent the prejudicing of trials. Anything that is said or reported about the suspects rounded up this week could, the police contend, prejudice their trial and prevent their prosecution. …
Nevertheless, media lawyer Duncan Lamont told the Guardian’s MediaTalk podcast that some suprisingly prejudicial material had been released, including “material that normally would guarantee an editor going to prison.” The contempt laws, Lamont said, were being stretched close to the US situation where both sides in a trial play out their cases in public.
But would that be such a bad thing? A year ago, both Andrew Neil and Heather Brooke argued that the sub judice rules imposed by the Contempt of Court Act are an unreasonable limitation on freedom of expression and are elitist in their conception of how juries are influenced by media coverage. Perhaps their criticisms need to be revisited.
Tags: Journalism, Media Law
