Understanding Court And Reporting

'Where there is no publicity, there is no justice. Publicity is the very soul of justice. It is the keenest spur to exertion and the surest of all guards against improbity. It keeps the judge himself while trying under trial.' This saying of Jeremy Bentham about two centuries ago is enough to understand the importance of disseminating the information about the court, its proceedings and verdicts. When people know that justice is possible, they will be motivated to go to the court to safeguard their rights and punish the perpetrators of crime. It establishes the importance of court reporting in journalism and helps the judiciary to disseminate important and everyday events to the masses.

Court reporting has long been established as a specialised form of journalism for long. But very few reporters vie for this discipline because of its demand for expertise in the country's legal system, law-making, court proceeding and high level of accuracy. Some of them are also apprehensive of the contempt of court. While there are courses on journalism, media and communication, and law from high school to the master's level, and a couple of universities are offering court/legal reporting as an optional subject at the master's level, there is a shortage of textbooks in the Nepali language and context.

To fulfil this gap, the Constitutional and Judicial Journalists Forum has published a book containing the basics of the Nepali legal system and court reporting. The book is written and edited by Dr. Liladhar Upadhyaya and Rakesh Bam and contains an introduction to court and court reporting, laws related to court reporting, and a code of conducts issued by the court and journalists' organisation. The book sensitises the readers with brief legal, constitutional and judicial history in Nepal along with the evolution of court reporting. It mentions that the first evidence of court reporting could be found with the publication of news on the verdict of Gorkha Parishad in 1940 (1997 BS), which issued capital punishments for Shukra Raj Shastri, Gangalal Shrestha, Dharma Bhakta Mathema and Dasharath Chand. However, this discipline evolved as a specialised reporting in journalism after the restoration of democracy in 1990.