Social Media Warning - Attorney General

The attorney general is set to publish a guidance on social media to prevent people from commenting on legal cases.

13:20 04 December 2013

Dominic Grieve QC, the attorney general hopes to prevent people from commenting on legal cases on social media. In line with this, he is set to publish guidance on Twitter to warn people to avoid committing contempt of court. This will apply to court cases in England and Wales.

The move comes after Peaches Geldolf has apologised for tweeting information relating to a case. Last year, several people were fined after they named a woman raped by footballer Ched Evans.

According to the guidance, anyone commenting about a case or defendant in a way that could prejudice a trial could be prosecuted for contempt and imprisoned.

However, Technology expert Tom Cheesewright isn’t very optimistic about the guidance. He said: "It's very unlikely we're going to have rules that stop this happening.”

"It's going to be about education and part of that education is going to come from high-profile prosecutions."