Should a jury know only what is said in the court?

A young journalist was recently convicted of sub judice contempt of court and given a good behaviour bond, and her employer fined $300,000 for the extra information she added to her story about a man facing court for murder. (See DPP v Johnson & Yahoo!7 (No 2) [2017] VSC 45.)

The man was facing trial in Melbourne for the murder of his partner, but when the journalist wrote her online story about the case for Yahoo!7, she added material on the man that she had gleaned from his social media accounts and that had not been mentioned in court.

Four days after the journalist posted her unedited story online, the defence protested that it prejudiced the trial. The judge declared a mistrial, as a juror may have read the story and it could have potentially influenced their evaluation of the evidence.