Justice Michael Lee, the man who oversaw the sensational defamation case brought by Bruce Lehrmann against Brittany Higgins, Network 10 and Lisa Wilkinson has declared that journalism is a search for the “objective truth” and that the media has a critical role to play in preserving the integrity of our legal system.
At the annual Women in Media National Conference, held at the Sofitel Sydney on Friday 9 August, Justice Lee and Ita Buttrose, former chair of the ABC, untangled our complex media landscape, explaining that objective truth and audience trust are harder than ever to find.
Justice Michael Lee oversaw the defamation trial of Bruce Lehrmann against Brittany Higgins, Network 10 and Lisa Wilkinson, which Lehrmann lost after Lee ruled that on the balance of probabilities, Lehrmann raped Higgins in Parliament House in Canberra.
Lee’s summation of the case was famously livestreamed with hundreds of thousands tuning in to hear his verdict. At the Conference, Lee explained he valued ‘open justice’, and allowing people to see the legal system at work, as well as giving Australians the ability to hold them to account.
Lee found that the reaction to his livestreaming had been positive.
“People like to see the legal line at work,” said Buttrose.
“Justice ought not just be done, but seen to be done,” added Lee. “If you’re going to restore trust in the legal system, people have got to see it in action”.
Lee pointed to a recent Resolve Political Monitor survey that found two-thirds of Australians do not have faith in the legal system, with more of them having faith in the police.
Lee was “troubled” by the stats, explaining that “it’s a failure of the system”.
“Courts should explain what they’re doing in order to gain public trust,” he said.
He argued that courts are a democratic, open system that should belong in the public sphere, rather than be isolated from it.
Additionally, “journalists and publications should fight suppression and non-publication orders “more vigorously,” said Lee.
“One way I think the media could do better is ensuring that courts and judges are held to account when it comes to suppression laws and things that interfere with the principles of open justice,” he said.
“Any time that a suppression order is made in my court… the news media has a statutory right to appeal and challenge the order and be heard on whether the order will be made.”
Another issue is the lack of resources allocated to court reporting, which Lee said “doesn’t reflect the importance of courts in our society”.
“I’ve been involved in cases where I read what the media is writing about it and have wondered, ‘What the hell is going on?’”
Journalism & the law share a key value
“Both journalism and the law are a search for truth,” said Buttrose.
While Justice Michael Lee agreed, he specified that they are different kinds of truth.
He boldly stated that “the job of the judge is not to work out the truth”.
“Instead, it is to assess materials others put before you, evaluate it, and determine whether you are satisfied to a particular standard of whether someone had made out a proposition. Whereas a journalist’s job is to seek out objective truth.
“There is objective truth and honest opinion, which is important for defamation trials.
“I do take very seriously the oath I took when I became a judge, which was to decide cases without fear or favour, and the liberating thing is it means I don’t owe anything to anyone,” he said.
“But when I was a barrister, I could know that my personal involvement in a case changed someone’s life for the better”.
In today’s troubled media landscape, following journalist redundancies at Nine, News Corp and Meta’s ongoing battle with local publishers, Lee’s comments about journalists “seeking out the truth” and the lack of resources allocated for court reporting should make sobering reading for many.
