Week 4 - The Justice Gap: Interview with Michael Mansfield QC

Mansfield: Level of collusion between police, politicians and media is ‘disturbing’

Mansfield calls for legal profession to strike against legal aid cuts

Week Four

Following the interview with Michael Mansfield the previous week, I continued to work on editing the footage from the interview down into separate categories as there was a few news agendas to cover, including legal aid, new chambers, police corruption and miscarriages of justice to name but a few. The video's above show part one and two of the interview.

This week I focused on the comments made about the collusion amongst the press and politicians as this was extremely topical this week with the all of the national press covering the 'plebgate' row. This therefore made it current on top of updating it on the day after a senior tory called for a royal commission for police to wear microphones and cameras to record their contact with the public.

This taught me the importance of making it topical to draw attention to it, we lead with our own interview quotes from Mansfield to make the article unique to the Justice Gap by using our own source. But I made it relevant to the storm around the plebgate saga by using quotes from Nick Clegg and from other professionals off twitter, radio broadcasts and newspapers.

Every article that is written is distributed across twitter targeting those of interest. They have been receiving a lot of attention from criminal barristers and legal professionals. Click the headlines to be directed to the articles

The topic of police corruption has received masses amount of press attention recently, therefore I wanted to get in touch with the National College of Policing to organise an interview with the Chief Executive Alex Marshall. This would of worked well for WINOL, it would of localised the story for the bulletin as he is the ex-chief constable for Hampshire. I hoped to speak about the 'unspoken immunity' amongst police that Mansfield commented on and give him the right to defend the police over the negative press that they have received. After speaking with his PR regarding Mansfield's comments on the level of distrust between the police and society he was not willing to comment on the matter.