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Dominic Casciani

11 Nov, 9 tweets, 2 min read

There is a livestream of the undercover policing inquiry here - but it is virtually unusable for reporters trying to follow it remotely. The words are appearing via a fast scrolling video feed that can't be paused or rewound: ucpi.org.uk/hearing/eviden…

1) I can't type that fast to copy down everything. If I could hear the audio - which we are not allowed to do - I could take down quotes in shorthand.
2) We cannot scroll back to check quotes. 20 years ago at the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, we could do that.

3) If I were to screen-shot key quotes (to transcribe for a report) I would then miss the next five minutes. And given I can't hear the evidence, I can't say whether we would miss something important.

4) The transcript is being posted as a document after any deadlines for daily reporting. This means that I and others are going to struggle to report the inquiry contemporaneously for evening deadlines.

5) This basically means, from a practical perspective as a working reporter, that a public inquiry becomes largely impossible to report.

6) Example: The chairman Sir John Mitting gave some kind of legal warning at the outset while I was busy elsewhere. Did it relate to reporting restrictions? I have no means of checking the transcript. How does a professional reporter then avoid accidental Contempt of Court?

7) Since Covid I have listened in to no end of remote hearings. Some have better audio/video than others. (Some have had terrible sound - Manchester Arena Inquiry pre-hearing media access legal argument I'm looking at you.)

8) But these many other hearings have just about worked in some way or other. This set up does not assist, at a very basic level, reporters to do their job of reporting a *public inquiry* established by the Home Secretary to *answer public concerns* about abuses by some officers

New problem with this live transcript that hadn't occurred o me, but now spotted by a colleague. When a witness is asked to comment on a document, it's impossible to follow what their evidence means, because nobody can see the document #unreportable

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Dominic Casciani

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... And today's utterly bizarre story from the world of semi-secret court hearings is....

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