ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter, I have explored how journalists espousing the doctrine of the Fourth Estate consider it their professional duty to subject the legal system to constant vigilance and scrutiny, which means that they are inclined to adopt distrust and cynicism as their default position. However, it has also been observed that media reports may be seen as deferential in other respects: superficial and even distorted reporting may gloss over elements of legal procedure (for example, by taking the fairness of a trial as a given) which, if they were extensively commented on by the media, would testify to an even greater cynicism. This chapter seeks to examine how judges themselves respond to growing media criticism of their work which has become, to put it in the words of Mr Justice Kirby (1998), a justice in the High Court of Australia, ‘a universal phenomenon’. Although his comments mainly concern common law jurisdictions, it is safe to assume that many judges in continental Europe would agree with his claim that media deference for judges has become a thing of the past.1
