Every morning for the past seven months, TV drama screenwriter, author, and freelance journalist Peter Jukes has been waking up at 8am, checking his iPad and keyboard are charged, walking 15 minutes from his flat to the Old Bailey, logging on to Twitter, and live-tweeting everything he’s allowed to report from the phonehacking trial.
Before starting, the writer, who has contributed to the Daily Beast, Independent and New Statesman as well as writing copiously for BBC television and radio, only stops for a coffee at Starbucks and a nod to the defendants – including Rebekah and Charlie Brooks, and Andy Coulson – outside the door of the court. He then plunges into the minefield of reporting restrictions and risks of contempt of court while relaying the country’s most high-profile court case to the world.
Now, after around seven months, the jury’s finally out on the trial. I caught up with Jukes towards the end of his coverage – the day his keyboard had to be replaced it was so knackered – to find out exactly how, and why, he decided to report the trial this way.
Holding court
As the afternoon sun blasts the obstinate grey brick and colonnades of the Old Bailey, I wait outside for Jukes to appear at the end of another day in court. But before my interviewee arrives, a gaggle of figures come into view at the entrance, through which passersby can usually only catch a glimpse of an airport-style security system.
Two of the trial’s seven defendants, Rebekah and Charlie Brooks, emerge from the building. One lurking cameraman bounces into action. They quickly leave in a cab, but not before the smattering of pedestrians wandering outside has caught sight of the former News of the World and Sun editor who has since featured so heavily on newspaper front pages, before ending up in court to answer charges of conspiracy to phone-hack, commit misconduct in public office and pervert the course of justice.
Jukes explains how so many months covering the phone-hacking trial have meant he is on first-name terms with the defendants. He wished Rebekah Brooks a happy birthday last month, she often says “hi” to him, former Downing Street communications director and ex-editor of News of the World Andy Coulson holds the door open for him, and he’s been lent an umbrella by Cheryl Carter, Brooks’s former assistant. He’s also on chatting terms with fellow journalists, lawyers and police from being such a regular presence at the courtroom, although he’s at pains to assure me that there is “nothing indiscreet” about their familiarity.
“You all rub together. . . It’s not like a family, but it’s people you spend seven months with. You get quite fond of them. You say ‘hi’ every day,” he relates, over a coffee in Starbucks, a two-minute stride from the courtroom that has become his world.
Yet Jukes points out that “getting up every morning and going to the Old Bailey – it’s not a nice environment. It’s kind of grim.
“I call it the Palace of Tears, because people are not in a very happy circumstance when they turn up there. Every day somebody’s crying, a relative, a defendant looking fearful, a witness looking fearful. It’s not a happy place.”
Jukes has written nearly half a million words, and his last count on his keyboard was 2.5m keystrokes. A database expert has been voluntarily amassing his tweets each night, and indexing them. He shows me his brand new keyboard; his battered old one didn’t quite survive the whole trial.
Have there been any physical implications for Jukes after all this tapping away?
via New Statesman | Why and how Peter Jukes live-tweeted the entire phonehacking trial.
The Criminal Media Nexus 
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