The Lord Chief Justice for England and Wales has allowed journalists to report some of the court proceedings using Twitter, texting and email.
To avail this facility, journalists will have to apply for permission to use social media on case to case basis, and the judge will allow use of these as long as he believes it would not interfere with the administration of justice.
The ruling on the use of Twitter in court proceedings was prompted after journalists used the social media at the bail hearing of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to provide updates.
The judge issued interim guidance on the use of social media, such as Twitter. The guidance also covers the use of mobile, e-mail and internet-enabled laptops.
Lord Justice Judge said the use of an unobtrusive, hand-held, virtually silent piece of modern equipment for the purposes of simultaneous reporting of proceedings to the outside world as they unfold in court is unlikely to interfere with the proper administration of justice.
Lord Justice Judge was quoted by guardian.co.uk as saying that the most obvious purpose of permitting the use of live, text-based communications would be to enable the media to produce fair and accurate reports of the proceedings.
