Silliness from Stuff over suppression
Lloyd Burr writes at Stuff:
If you’re caught breaking into someone’s house and stealing their stuff, police will charge you, you’ll go to court, and you’ll be punished.
Same thing applies if you’re speeding, dealing drugs, or committing the vast array of crimes we have in New Zealand.
But write a social media post which breaches suppressions issued by the High Court, you’ll most probably get away with it.
No. You won’t get away with it if you knowingly breach a suppression order, but the vast majority of those posting don’t know what is suppressed, and don’t know they are breaching an order.
But what’s becoming increasingly apparent is both a lack of urgency in clamping down on the rule-breakers, and a lack of knowing exactly which agency is responsible for enforcing it.
The Justice Minister says it’s the courts. The courts say it’s the agencies like police and Crown Law to enforce it but for parties (lawyers or Joe Public) to report them.
It isn’t that complicated. The courts don’t investigate people for other crimes. The Police and Crown Law do. Same for suppression orders. And as with other crimes, they generally rely on someone complaining – often the lawyer who got the suppression order. Sometimes the Police do take action proactively.
Over the last 20 years I have been approached over a dozen times regarding posts or comments on Kiwiblog that could breach suppression orders. Sometimes a post was made that wasn’t in breach at the time, but then an order was made. Sometimes it isn’t in breach, but Police want to make sure the defendant can’t argue any info out there could be used to argue on appeal the jury pool was prejudiced. Sometimes lawyers or Crown Law approach me.
But here is the key thing. Up until someone in authority tells me about the suppression order, I don’t know that anything on my blog is in breach. So often I find out what information is suppressed, by being told something on Kiwiblog breaches it. Ir ironically means I learn exactly what the suppressed information is.
And this is the problem with complaining people on social media are breaching suppression orders. I doubt 99% of them know what is suppressed in the Tom Phillips case. I certainly don’t. I have heard many rumours. And what they re doing is repeating rumours. The only way you can get them to remove their posts is to tell them the details of the suppression order, which will then mean they will go from someone who is guessing what happened, to someone who knows. It probably makes the problem worse.
Suppression orders worked when the only publishers were a few dozen media outlets. They would have reporters in court and hence know what is suppressed.
If you really want suppression orders to work in a digital age, you need to do the following:
- Establish a highly secure database of suppression orders. Currently not even Crown Law or the Police know them all. Each court is its own empire, and there is no central list.
- Allow access to key agencies on a very restricted basis – Crown Law, Police, Justice Ministry
- Allow accredited media organisations to either access the database directly or have a very quick query service. Have big penalties for any breaches of the database.
- Allow non-media publishers to query with the organisation running the database if a particular statement breaches any suppression orders. Not get details of them, just a yes/no.
But even all that won’t at the end of the day stop people gossiping. The moment there is huge public interest in something, suppression orders don’t work. In fact they can make things worse because the gossip can be far worse than the reality.