The trial of Rebekah Brooks, Andrew Coulson and five others will resume tomorrow at 2pm at the Old Bailey before Mr Justice Saunders and a jury. This will be Week 9 of the trial which seems unlikely to conclude before the end of April.
There has been a seventeen day seasonal break in proceedings. Week 8 concluded on 19 December 2013 with prosecution evidence on royal voicemails. The evidence contained the unsurprising “revelation” that voicemails left by members of the royal family had been hacked by the News of the World.
At the conclusion of the hearing Mr Justice Saunders told the jury that the trial was running 2 or 3 weeks behind but he hoped to catch up. He then said if “you are feeling like getting ill this winter the next two weeks would be a good time“. He concluded by praising the jury, telling them: “You’ve been incredibly tolerant, thank you very much.”
At the end of the seventh week of the trial, we had a survey of the available online reports, links and live tweets. We also covered the trial in Part 2 of our “Media and Law Review of the Year, 2013”.
The best way to follow the evidence is from Peter Jukes’ live tweets (@peterjukes). This trial coverage has been financed by crowd funding. There is a summary of The Trial so Far on the Fothom blog. Jon Lippitt has produced a full indexed version of the live tweets.
Jon Lippitt has also compiled an index of the hacking trial evidence, charges, defendants, witnesses, victims and police officers. There is also a handy list of counsel for the crown and defence (useful to work out what is happening in some of the live tweets):
The fullest coverage of the trial can be found on the #press Reform blog which has daily posts including the live tweets and links to each day’s media stories about the trial.
There are daily posts about the trial by James Doleman on the Drum website in his column entitled: “Inside the Brooks Coulson Trial”. In his most recent piece, entitled “Phone Hacking Trial: Bloggers, tweets and Alan Sugar”, James Doleman discusses the tweeters and bloggers reporting on the trial, concluding
There has been debate on whether or not this level of online reporting is really a rival to traditional media coverage or just an extra level of detail, likely to be interesting only to a few obsessives. As the case proceeds and we move on to the defendants themselves taking the stand – Andy Coulson has already stated he will – we may not settle that argument, but we will be in a far better position to have it.
Nick Davies has provided a compendium of his Guardian articles. In addition the Guardian has also published daily trial reports by Lisa O’Carroll.
The “Media Matters for America” has an interesting list of the top 14 “newsworthy developments” which have emerged from the trial so far.
The prosecution will continue to present its case this week, with the defence cases unlikely to begin for several weeks.
We will continue our regular coverage of the trial from tomorrow.
Reblogged this on David Hencke and commented:
This important trial which is being largely ignored by sections of the mainstream media resumes tomorrow. I will continue to run blogs with short comments on my site of reports by @martin_hickman and documents from @peterjukes with their agreement.
Reblogged this on ambulivictor's Blog.
Reblogged this on Vox Political.