Live blogs can’t handle the truth? A contemporary cross-cultural consideration of transparency and procedural justice

Abstract

Reporting from trials using live blogs to continuously inform readers about courtroom events have rapidly become an established part of legal life and are often assumed to fulfill demands of open justice. However, a deep sociolegal understanding of how legal professionals perceive live blogs as affecting procedural justice is currently missing, as is a thick understanding of what transparency means to legal professionals. As more detailed knowledge on contemporary transparency will contribute to understanding the acceptance and resistance to open justice and specific reporting formats, this study focuses on the interlinking of legal professionals, transparency and live blogs. A qualitative cross-cultural approach finds that legal professionals consider Bentham’s tenets to be partially transformed, in particular regarding the original truth function. Rather than enabling truths, legal professionals perceive live blogs as a threat to truths. Nevertheless, live blogs are considered to provide good enough transparency in relation to specific jurisdictional contexts.