Justice Monageng, a High Court Judge, has said that journalists should be given the opportunity to access court records in order to make their work easy and to avoid frequent inaccurate and inconsistent reporting at all times in their reporting.

The High Court Judge made this startling observation last Thursday in the wake of a publication in one of the local newspaper report about a court proceeding before her, which she described as totally inaccurate and inconsistent.  Monageng drew the attention of Emmanuel Fagbenle, Acting Director of Public Prosecution (DPP), Journalists, Lawyers and other people in the court about the issue, especially the DPP.

She noted that the issue of journalists to access court records has to be put across and adequately address, for any journalist who has any doubt in the course of court proceedings to have flexible opportunity without hindrance to consult the court clerk and go through the records to clarify or clarifies any inconsistency or doubt in their report.

This according to her, would greatly reduce imbalance and fake information reporting in the local newspapers. “I hope that journalists’ in the court are listening and heed the advice” she observed”.
Emmanuel Fagbenle, Acting Director of Public Prosecution (DPP), responding to the High court Judge’s observation said, there is a need to capacitise journalists because there is no school for journalism in the country. “Such may be the cause of some of these minor errors and lapses”.

He promised to put the matter across to the lawyers and if possible organise training seminars for journalists’ in the country for a brainstorming interactive session to be part of efforts to over-come some of the minor errors in their reports.