The media hates it when courts issue suppression orders.  It means that they can’t run juicy stories and publish incriminating photographs of people accused of heinous crimes.  But there is a reason why suppression orders have become much more commonplace in recent years and it is because of the irresponsibility of the media and the lynch mobs it generates.

This is the point Andrew Dodd missed yesterday in his piece on a case in South Australia involving an MP who is charged with s-x offences but whose name has been suppressed.

Lawyers argue for suppression orders to ensure that their client gets a fair trial.  In other words, that his or her name is not subjected to biased, malicious, and ill-informed reporting by the media, which will make it harder for an individual to be judged purely on the evidence before the court, and not on emotive and prejudicial images and stories that have been published in the lead-up to the trial.

The media is to blame for the growth of suppression orders.  Take Brendan Sokaluk, for example.  Sokaluk was arrested shortly after the February 2009 Victorian bushfires.  Vigilante groups set up Facebook pages, his family was harassed and subject to media stories and the Herald Sun was forced to remove readers’ comments from its stories on him. That newspaper also ran stories about Sokaluk, which portrayed him as a “loner who went to a special school, he tried to become a CFA volunteer for years but was always knocked back.”  Channel 7 news even doorstopped Sokaluk’s father.

More recently, in May this year, a Sydney couple were charged with murdering their young daughter.  TV news bulletins ran images of people screaming at the couple as they were driven away in a police car.  So much for the presumption of innocence — it was trashed by this footage of the mob baying for blood.

And then there is the notorious case of Dennis Ferguson, a man with a criminal history that included s-x offences, who was subjected to having the media and an angry mob of locals out the front of his house and who was called a “monster” by the Gold Coast Bulletin in the lead-up to his trial.

In fact, in the case of s-x offences, it is arguable that a person’s name should be suppressed until after they have been found guilty, if that is the outcome of their case.  This is because the media hounds them and their name is ruined for ever by virtue of the nature of the offence with which they are charged.

Suppression orders are a necessary antidote to media sensationalism and bias, and vigilantism, of the online and physical form.  The right to a fair trial is paramount as is the presumption of innocence.  Suppression orders ensure that this remains the case.

*Greg Barns is national president of the Australian Lawyers Alliance and is a barrister.