Leaders: Case for relaxing restrictions on court broadcasts

INCH by inch, Scottish courts are moving towards the 21st century. The decision that cameras will be allowed to film High Court judge Lord Bracadale when he sentences David Gilroy for the murder of Suzanne Pilley is welcome.

Cameras have filmed court proceedings that have been later broadcast before. But this is the most serious and high-profile criminal case where filming for broadcast has been allowed. The public-interest case for allowing this is substantial.

Indeed, the public interest also raises questions about whether the rules of broadcast in criminal proceedings are too restrictive and ought to be relaxed further. This is not a matter of prurient sensationalism occasioned by this particular case, but a straightforward consideration that the means of communication through which the public learn all manner of proceedings in their name have changed markedly.

Television cameras are no longer the size of tea chests on stilts, but can be barely noticeable. They no longer need cameramen behind them, but can be operated remotely. Microphones can be the size of shirt buttons and wireless technology is doing away with the spaghetti confusion of wiring. The case for restricting the filming of court proceedings because the equipment involved is too obtrusive has evaporated.

Similarly, many people no longer receive the news of court verdicts and sentences simply through the columns of a newspaper or by a reporter recounting it on radio or television. The internet and social media have multiplied the channels of communication exponentially.

This is also a time when public scepticism of traditional institutions, including the courts, is high. This, in our view, may be unjustified, but is a consequence of the fact that legal proceedings and the course of justice now seem to many to be hidden from view.

Of course, they are not hidden and never have been. Justice can be seen to be done, not just by members of the media, but also by those members of the public who trouble to sit in the gallery provided for any citizen wishing to exercise their right to watch the wheels of justice turn.

Seeing justice at work, however, has a different complexity in today’s multi-media world. And if the principle that justice must be seen to be done is to have real meaning in this sophisticated environment, then it should be recognised that broadcasting court proceedings has to become more widespread.

Of course, there have to be safeguards. Filming should exclude jurors – performing a public service, particularly when deciding verdicts in serious criminal cases, should carry the right of privacy and anonymity.

But why should Gilroy be unseen when Lord Bracadale sentences him? He has been found guilty of a callous crime. Reporters and members of the public in court will be able to see his reaction when sentenced.

There is no sense in not permitting the public outside the court to see that as well.

Curriculum failure comes from top

More evidence that the Curriculum for Excellence is not going to achieve the purpose for which it was designed has emerged. This time it is not teachers who are saying this, but researchers from Stirling University’s School for Education. They found what has become gradually known in recent months – some schools are embracing the new teaching programme with enthusiasm, but many more are not.

But the terms in which the researchers have couched their conclusions cast fresh light on the reasons for this patchy and disappointing picture. Some of the failure is because, they say, teachers have been used to working within a prescriptive framework, where what they impart to pupils has been laid down for them to follow.

The new curriculum involved teachers generating their own ideas of what should be taught, but this freedom of action has turned into a blockage of indecision. Some schools have hardly embarked on the thinking about, and setting, of objectives that the curriculum demands of teachers.

Rather damningly, the researchers say that they do not buy the idea that there is not considerable potential in the new curriculum. Instead, they contend that the potential and how to realise it has not been communicated effectively to teachers.

This points to a major failure of leadership. The Curriculum for Excellence required leadership, not to cudgel them into implementation, but to inspire them with a new vision for Scottish secondary education.

Such leadership can only come from the top. Education secretary Mike Russell has questions to answer.

How Greene is our valley?

HOLLY Martins could not be sure, but it seemed as though the walk Anna suggested had a purpose. He allowed himself to be led into Princes Street Gardens on to the broad boulevard that led towards a fountain.

He thought he saw the outline of a face he had seen the night before as a match flared in a darkened doorway. It was hard to tell – the figure was obscured by the rotating spokes of a huge Ferris wheel. But as he neared, realisation dawned. It was his old friend Harry Lime, not dead, but very much alive.

“Harry!” he gasped, but Harry said nothing, put a finger to his lips and ushered Holly into a seat on the Ferris wheel, which promptly lurched into motion. “You deserve an explanation,” said Harry, as the wheel ascended to its full height. “This city had three centuries of peace and harmony and produced the Usher Hall, the National Galleries and the Scott Monument.

“Now they have got constant constitutional confusion and coalitions in the City Chambers…” his voice tailed off as car horns roared in protest at tramworks jams. “And what did they produce?” he resumed. “A Ferris wheel and no trams.”

He sniffed contemptuously at a treetop. “It doesn’t have a view. You could never shoot a decent movie here.”