The Ethics of Court Reporting: Storytelling in the Courtroom and Newsroom

Using reporting on the committal and trial of rugby league star Brett Stewart as a case study, this chapter explores complex questions of ethics in court reporting on sexual violence. From interviews with court reporters, I identify two main approaches to ethics: one which sees the court reporter’s role as reproducing what happens in court and relies on a traditional view of journalistic objectivity, and the other seeing a responsibility to ‘protect’ victims and not overemphasise problematic defence strategies. I propose a theory of meaning-making for court reporting, showing how genre conventions grant particular kinds of significance to events and speech acts. Subtle discursive and narrative strategies privilege either the prosecution or defence’s narrative, portraying the defendant or complainant as ‘guilty’ even without overt sensationalising or vilification.