Reporter’s Diary: Withholding lawyers’ names puts reporters in a fix

Even in the use of judges’ name, the division bench comprising Justices Nooty Ramamohana Rao and S S Sundar held that judges are just performing their duty and that their names are irrelevant while reporting the case in dailies and other magazines.   

A circular in this regard was also circulated to all media houses recently. But the diktat has come as a dampener, especially for reporters, since the authenticity of any news depends on quoting the advocates and the Judges concerned. Matters get worse for the visual media as they can’t hide the face of the advocate while interviewing him/her. With a contempt of court threat hanging over the High Court reporters’ shoulders for spelling out names, scribes now have to attribute verdicts to the various benches while the petitioners and defendants will henceforth be represented by ‘an advocate of the Madras High Court’.