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VIEWPOINT
Contempt of court or contempt of media?
The Cayman Reporter seeks to promote social and economic development, better understanding and unity among all the people of the Cayman Islands. P O. Box 10707, Grand Cayman KY1 – 1006 Cayman Islands, BWI Tel: (345) 946-6060 Email: news@caymanreporter.com sales@caymanreporter.com editor@caymanreporter.com Web: www.caymanreporter.com Letters to the editor and online forum policy The Cayman Reporter invites correspondence on all issues. In the interest of openness and transparency, we will not accept correspondence that is unsigned. We request that all letters be submitted with a name for publication regardless of content, and names and contact details of the writer be supplied. We will in special circumstances protect a writer’s identity only after we have established good cause for anonymity, otherwise we will not be able to publish the correspondence. Letters can be e-mailed to news@ caymanreporter.com Writers may also drop their letters into the Cayman Reporter offices at #222, Mirco Centre on North Sound Road in George Town.
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oncern should be raised about the proposed ‘Contempt of Court Consultation Paper’ by the Law Reform Commission (LRC). Although it is a consultative paper, some of the suggestions made are so provocative that the public, particularly those of us in the media, should sit up and take serious notice. Among the more egregious is one in which a publisher can be fined up to CI$700 if a publication causes a trial to be aborted and it is proved that the publisher intended that result. Big stories like the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon were just stories being told dutifully by journalists . Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward were not aware of the extent of what they were getting into. Anyone who has read ‘All the President’s Men’, and ‘The Final Days’ should now be aware that the United States was on the brink of civil strife where the commander in chief was planning to use the military to suppress the opposition. Watergate shows how an innocent story that a journalist might pick could lead to serious consequences for a country.
The idea of a maximum fine on publishers would suggest that the paper’s authors do not have good intentions for the welfare of journalists in the Cayman Islands. The proposers do not see it necessary to protect journalists from being compelled to name their sources, and in fact, a reporter could even face time in prison for ignoring a judge’s order to reveal his/her sources. This is a provision that is embedded in English law. Why shouldn’t there be a similar protection for local journalists, since, this is not something that is commonly invoked by journalists here anyway? The anonymity of those who provide confidential information is sacrosanct in journalism. Without this protection it could become a nightmare to report the news in the Cayman Islands and will put an unnecessary stranglehold on the media. We also note that the consultation paper proposes to be in favour of disallowing photography and video cameras in the courts and that it cites cases like the OJ Simpson trial
and the more recent Zimmerman/ Trayvon Martin case as salient reasons for this. Well, doubtless there are countless other cases in between these extremes that the authors of the paper could cite, but they have chosen not to. Point well taken. We have to ask, why now and why these stringent proposals to reform the contempt of court law. The authors cite the Bill of Rights and the growth of electronic media as two mitigating factors. Since the Bill of Rights has been in force, we have not had significant issues relating to the curtailment of rights. We cannot use hypothetical situations to create laws that will impede the freedom to pursue information by journalists. Let’s be careful that in trying to protect the rights of those involved in court cases, we do not trample upon the rights of others, particularly the rights of journalists and the press in general. The authors should know that the “instantaneous and geographically unconstrained” means of electronic communication, which they cite as another influencing factor, is a bullet train that no amount of draconian legislation can stop.
Mass media operations are no longer in traditional media. There are persons who have millions of followers on social media networks like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. What about when a simple post finds it way across these channels, perhaps reaching far more that traditional media could? Should these also be judged as impinging on the rights of accused persons, or is the contempt law reform more focused on preventing cameras in the courtroom? While those proposing these reforms would argue that we are jumping the gun, because a bill has not yet been introduced to the Legislative Assembly, we all know that the law depends on how a lawyer has interpreted it and brought arguments to the judge. The most convincing argument in the eyes of the judge carries the day despite the validity of such. The Law Reform Commission appears to be doing more that revising the contempt law. Its proposals hardly disguise an intent to constrain the press, which is a rather troubling development.
Waiting for the full revealing
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s we considered last week, the season of Epiphany refers to truths or realities that are revealed or manifested to the world through the events of the life of Jesus of Nazareth in His life upon earth. We also thought of certain implications of the Book of Common Prayer Collect for the Feast Day of the Epiphany, which asserts that those who know God do so now by faith, and wait and earnestly hope for the fruition of such seeds of faith after this life. We considered the fact that God does not equally reveal Himself to us in every circumstance of life; for we understand that God's revelation takes place in a particular association with Jesus Himself. If we know God now by faith, through Jesus, then it must be known also that much of what we see, much of our experience of the world does not reveal God to us, and in fact may serve to obscure God rather than reveal Him. We can indeed identify many things that serve to obscure God rather than reveal Him. Some of those things may serve to obscure God by their beauty and attraction. I have been thinking of the sorry plight of the (reportedly) 36-yearold man that seems to have been the leader of the armed gang who broke into Diamonds International the other day in full sight of thousands of tourists, and got his feet pinned to the ground by the quick action of the Commissioner of Police. Some of the callers on a morning talk show have, in some kind of time warp, referred sympathetically to this individual as a "young man". Why? Perhaps
Bishop Nicholas Sykes
he perversely has become a source of idolatrous attraction for some. With all things, and even all people, we have to ensure that the sympathy or even regard we have for them does not get to the point of being idolatrous. There are other things that are part of this world's experience which are very ugly. For some, these may have the effect of negating to us the love of God. If somebody’s child dies, there may be an immediate or indeed sustained reaction of anger, among those who knew the person, that God has allowed or brought about such a thing. Those of us who have ever been affected by a hurricane to the point of serious loss may question the goodness of God. Indeed there are many who have been affected by recent serious flooding in Britain, others affected by abnormally cold and snowy conditions in the US and Canada, and others down under in southern Australia as well as near Los Angeles who are seriously impacted by wild fires. In recent years and currently, huge swathes of population have been forced to flee their homes in various areas of Africa and the East. It is natural to ask, does not God care about these people? - and with the question may be sown the seeds of doubt. Yet as St Paul and the Epiphany Collect both affirm, it is by faith through Jesus Christ, and not through the things of this age, whether they be ugly or attractive, that we come to know God, and by this faith too that we can become empowered to engage in a situation with people to turn it around by God’s strength - and sometimes
Bishop Nicholas Sykes the very situation that appeared at first to cause doubts becomes the vehicle by which God is glorified. So it is that by faith, we wait in all circumstances for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain us to the end. We learn from S. John 1:29-34 that John the Baptiser did not at the beginning of his ministry know Jesus to be the One who takes away the sin of the world, but during John’s course of ministry Jesus was baptised, and as the other Gospels also testify, a special revelation was granted on that occasion. In John 1:32 John the Baptiser says that the Holy Spirit descended and remained on Jesus, and this was the sign to John that here was the Son of God. And then, because of what John the Baptiser was now saying about Jesus, the gathering of disciples around Jesus began. The two disciples of John the Baptiser that became the beginning of the twelve, were Andrew, who in turn brought his brother Simon Peter, and probably John the son of Zebedee. John the Baptiser, who had experienced the epiphany of
the Son of God at the Baptism of Jesus, was now instrumental in the further epiphany of the gathering together of Jesus’ disciples around Him. St Paul in 1 Corinthians 1: 7 wrote of our waiting for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain us to the end, “guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” In the Christian life, there are periods of waiting and periods of forging strongly ahead, and in the one circumstance and in the other, God is equally faithful to us. He has been faithful to each person from the time of his or her baptism, even though we may have been unfaithful to Him many times. The promise to us in the times that we wait for His revealing to us, is that He will sustain us in the waiting, so that at the end of the time of waiting, we will be guiltless before Him. What has happened to the church repeatedly is a picture, an image of the day of His revealing after a period of waiting for Him. My trust is that we will find that day in which the Christian Church too is truly transformed after its time of waiting, and we can apply the same thought to our own lives as well. God has been faithful to us. We can make the words of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 49: 1-6 our own: The Lord called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name. He made my mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me away. And He said to me, “You are My servant, ... in whom
I will be glorified.” Jesus Christ is the fulfilment of these words, and they are in a lesser but real way true of those baptised into Christ too. Then the Servant goes on to express frustration: But I said “I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity.” Who is it that does not know such feelings? But the Lord said to the Servant, what you thought you were here for is too light a thing. “I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” Again, the words and the calling are fulfilled in Jesus Christ, but now it is those who are baptised into Jesus Christ that are upon the earth, and they too have an inescapable part to play in the calling into which they are baptised, and for which we wait in faith. Perhaps the time for which we are waiting is drawing very near. John the Baptist’s ministry, expressed by S. John 1:29-39, was transformed when the day came in which John saw the Spirit descending upon the Christ in the waters of His baptism. Let us remember that the baptised from all over the earth have a ministry too, given by Christ and signified by their baptism. We are to await keenly in active faith the day in which that worldwide ministry will be transformed, and one day, whether on this shore or upon another, that ministry will be completed (as the Prayer Book Epiphany Collect says) "in the fruition of the glorious Godhead." For commentary, information and devotional material see www. churchofenglandcayman.com