WikiLeaks Judge Allows Tweeting In Court

The judge overseeing the trial of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange yesterday gave permission for two journalists to post Twitter updates, in what is thought to be only the second time that members of the media have tweeted from the inside a courtroom.

As the hearing began at 2pm on 14 December, special correspondent for The Times, Alexi Mostrous tweeted: “judge just gave me explicit permission to tweet proceedings ‘if it’s quiet and doesn’t disturb anything’.”

Freelance reporter and freedom of information campaigner Heather Brooke also said: “In an amazing nod to the fact we live in digital age, judge has said we can tweet”.

Open legal process?

The decision by Chief Magistrate Howard Riddle to allow tweeting in court follows comments from the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, at a lecture in Belfast last month. In a speech about jury trials Lord Judge called for a reassessment of the types of media that can be used from within the courtroom.

“If it is possible to file a story via email from a laptop in court, then why is Twitter any different?” he asked at the time. “On the other hand, tape-recordings are prohibited by statute. Why is Twitter in the form of text-based transmission of material from court any different?”

There is currently no rule explicitly banning the use of mobile phones in court, but in practice they are prohibited during hearings, as are television cameras and recording equipment.

Lord Judge emphasised his belief that “the criminal trial process must always be open,” but also warned that Twitter could increase the “potential for prejudicial material” to be published online.

The news follows reports last week that Twitter was blocking #wikileaks and #cablegate from topping its ‘Trends’ list of popular tweet topics. Twitter rushed to defend itself against the accusations, claiming that some of these terms had previously trended either worldwide or in specific locations.

“Twitter Trends are automatically generated by an algorithm that attempts to identify topics that are being talked about more right now than they were previously,” wrote Carolyn Penner, from the press office at Twitter in a blog post. “Put another way, Twitter favors novelty over popularity.”