We simply can't allow Covid and the GDPR to stealth create a secret system of courts conducted behind closed doors.
I agree @HaveringWavering and I'm sure @JaniceBattersby and many others would too.
But it's been happening for at least 30 years beginning with the decline of local newspapers. Covid and GDPR are just the latest nails in the coffin used to kill the idea that everyone is entitled to public information because it is, in fact, public and should remain so.
No one owes anyone a living and if people don't want to buy local papers that is up to them. Why would you spend your hard-earned money on a degraded product? I wouldn't even if one existed where I live and I am very much in favour of journalism.
But you can't also complain that you have no access to or knowledge of local news that affects you like council spending, planning decisions, health provision, policing and court decisions. And you can't expect it to be there when you rouse yourself.
I don't expect anyone to know my job or to cry for me but how many people on this thread have blithely expected that a local reporter would be in court and they could look it up when they felt like it?
I used to attend court at least once a week and but that hasn't happened for years. Why should media organisations cover court or council meetings if you can only be bothered when you belatedly realise it affects you? Who do these people think is going to put it online for them on the off chance they feel like looking it up?
And the idea that if you really cared you'd attend court or council meetings is ridiculous. I don't know what to say of people smugly telling that to the OP @bravermanclan except to ask when was the last time they attended court in the public gallery or a council meeting or public inquiry or inquest or any other public meeting? It's my job and hardly anyone else has time except the most interested members of the public who have time and often money on their hands.
I don't doubt the OP is being given the runaround by jobsworths at her local court. It's wrong but lots of people are lazy. Lots of people don't understand that public information is just that and not a secret to be shared only among themselves.
It's my job to persist and I and other journalists derive immense job satisfaction from winkling out public information from lazy gits. At the end of a long wriggling I particularly enjoy saying: "There! It didn't hurt, did it?"
But that's only when I'm being paid to do it or have a bee in my bonnet. It amazes me when people routinely let others off claiming they must be really busy. Or cite privacy. We're all busy and enjoy our private lives but some of us still manage to do our jobs.
Open justice is a fundamental principle of courts and somewhere someone will be employed to give information. If they don't like the job they can get another one.