Contempt Of Court is basically when somebody is watching a court case disrupts the happenings in the court room, there are two ways to go about this, by being disruptive at the hearing or being outside of the courtroom which is where journalists are most at risk. This can be bad on the suspect of the accused on their behalf because it may change the way the jury see’s the case.
In law terms, there are two different types of Contempt of Court, Statutory Contempt and Common Law Contempt. Statutory Contempt, under the Contempt of Court Act 1981, criminalises the published print of material that can potentially create a high risk that the  sentence given to the accused could be dangerously impeded, changed or prejudiced. Common Law Contempt is in which targets another action that’s there to interfere with the administration of justice, this includes changing or encouraging pending or any future court actions.
The UK law for Contempt of Court is different from other countries, in the US, a basketball player was charged with sexual assault in a hotel and a television station had asked viewers to vote whether the accused should be pleaded innocent or guilty. The US judge then went on to dismiss the case after he failed to testify.
In 2012 the UK newspapers The Daily Mail and Daily Mirror were both found of guilty of Contempt of Court for their reporting’s on Levi Bellfield’s charge of the abduction and murder of English schoolgirl Milly Dowler. Sir John Thomas and Mr Justice Tugendhat both said that the coverage published from the newspapers “significantly exacerbated” the risk of serious prejudice for the high-profile jury trial. Although what Levi Bellfield did was complete and utterly wrong, the outcome of this trial was right – being a journalist for a high-profile newspaper you should be expected to know the correct laws and that you’re not to breach into them.
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