If you appear in Glasgow high court you’ll know the man opposite. Court reporting stalwart arnot mcwhinnie has covered the courts for some 50 years, but is soon to scribble his last shorthand note as he prepares to retire. Steven raeburn gets his thoughts on the decline in court reporting.

Stop-motion legend Ray Harryhausen has retired. The last great poster artist Drew Struzan is now sixty and will soon hang up his brush, and even Parky has conducted his last gentle interview. And in June this year, after a journalistic career spanning almost fifty years, which will have seen him tread a path through the criminal courts so extensive and memorable it is unlikely ever to be matched, old school reporting specialist and veritable journalistic legend Arnot McWhinnie will sit in his final court session, record his last shorthand notes, close his notebook, file his final story and leave the walls of the Court behind him forever.
Most days, an Arnot McWhinnie byline will appear over a court story in the Herald or the Scotsman. Not long ago, reporters of his ilk filled the court galleries, before Amy Winehouse, Pete Doherty and David Beckham’s pants supplanted the goings on in the Sheriff and High Courts as the meat and bread of the dailies. In these more prurient days one might expect court coverage to have increased, yet the very reverse is the case, to the degree that if you go down to the High Court, Arnot can be found ploughing very much a lonely furrow as the last of the great old school court covering journalists. The court’s press association will maintain a presence of course, but there is a sense that the art of court reporting is passing along with its last great exponent.
Starting as a school leaver, McWhinnie began court coverage at Johnstone Burgh Court almost immediately. A move to the Perth Courier, which required him to undertake English, intelligence and general knowledge tests, as well as a full day round robin interview programme, a medical exam -which required the provision of samples- saw him covering the court more extensively, in an atmosphere that has changed in the intervening years almost as extensively as recruitment procedures.
“It was a very much more formal atmosphere in court. You didn’t talk, and if you did, you would be removed,” he says, over a brew in the cafeteria at Glasgow’s High Court where he is based.
“The judges were revered in those days. Feared, even. In the High Court here, they used to march in procession from the chauffeur driven car at the front of the court, and do a slow march up the steps followed by the Macer and escorted by a police officer. Everybody had to stop, stand and bow, and form a passage for them to go through. They were held in awe by us all.”
The High Court itself has been subject to a modern refurbishment, which has softened its harsh Victorian aspect, a change which McWhinnie feels has detracted from the air of solemnity which was once afforded to the serious business of dispensing justice.
“If you look at this building, it is more of an airport lounge than a court. There is no feeling of awe when you walkthrough the front door. It is like a hotel foyer. Whereas at one time, they had trumpets heralding the start of a court sitting. In my time, the court sitting always started off with a prayer from the minister in court. The Lord Provost, Magistrates and the chief constable were called along to the opening of every sitting. It was a very serious business.”
The recent conviction of Atif Siddique on terrorism charges highlighted the fundamental change in court reporting over the years. During the trial, and particularly as the verdict approached, the court foyer was swarming with reporters whose names and bylines you are familiar with, for whom a trip to the court is a rare treat. The precinct was filled with the banter of reunion, backslapping and the catching up of old friends. On the day of our meeting, despite High Court business being carried on in four courts, McWhinnie prowled the corridors alone, the daily diet of high Court business evidently insufficiently sexy for coverage the mainstream papers.
“When I first started, a murder was a massive case. The news editor wanted to know everything about the accused. We did background, went to see families, collected pictures. Absolutely every spit and fart about the accused and the victim. A murder would be splashed in the paper. Latterly, when I worked as chief crime reporter in the Daily Record, it would get two paragraphs if you were lucky. Nobody is interested anymore which is really sad.”
McWhinnie agrees however that the lack of interest is definitely not on the part of the public, whom he believes would greatly appreciate greater coverage of the disorder in their communities.
“The public has a right to know what is going on in the courts. The papers just pick up on the unusual stories. Not the bread and butter stuff. I am getting out of it now. I just feel that some of the papers should be getting back to basics. Even just a few paragraphs is all it needs. We can go for days on end punting out 3 or 4 court stories a day, and never get one published. The editors aren’t interested. People are getting a false perception and don’t really know what is going on in the court.”
Arnot McWhinnie came to national prominence during the infamous Glasgow rape case, X v Sweeney. He played an instrumental part in exposing the confessions of men who had been charged with the brutal rape of ‘Carol X’, against whom charges had been controversially dropped, in the belief that Carol herself, the key witness, would be harmed by the trauma of giving evidence. McWhinnie’s experience in investigating the case with Ross Harper was later published in a book chronicling his role in the affair, which ultimately resulted in the conviction of the accused in an unprecedented private prosecution.
“That was a most exciting time for me. It was a fairly bad but routine case, until the Crown took the decision to drop all charges against the boys for all time,” he says. “It was an even bigger story when a certain person - whose identity I have never revealed; nor will I ever reveal -broke the details of their confessions to the crime. Had they gone to trial, they would have been convicted.”
The Crown’s decision not to prosecute ultimately led to the resignation of Lord Advocate Nicholas Fairbairn. McWhinnie believes the whole affair could have been avoided had the Crown reserved their right to reconsider the prosecution, rather than desert proceedings simpliciter.
“What you do is desert it pro loco et tempore, and then revisit it at a later stage and see if she is feeling better and able to give evidence. That is what they should have done. The interesting thing is that the Advocate Depute who took that decision is now a very senior High Court judge. He felt he made the right decision based on what he knew. But it really should have been deserted pro loco.”
McWhinnie does feel a certain satisfaction that, from a procedural point of view, the case had a wider impact on future trials.
“It has had ramifications which still affect the running of rape cases. Now the Lord Advocate or Solicitor general has to make the decision whether to drop a prosecution in a rape or murder case, and that stems directly from the Glasgow Rape Case. Also, victims have got to be told if a case is being dropped, and kept informed about its progress all the way through. From that point of view it did a lot of good. Whether it did any good for Carol, I don’t know. She is still on the streets of Glasgow, a down and out now.”
Aside from his legacy to the annals of crime reporting, which is extensive, McWhinnie firmly believes that the role of the court reporter is essentially a crucial public service. The lack of editorial enthusiasm, coupled with the Court’s own procedures, creates a difficulty in securing photographs of convicted criminals, which is depriving the public of essential civic information.
“In Glasgow, they are transferred into the van in the bowels of the court, and you cannot photograph them at all. A newspaper editor likes a photograph to go with the story. Without a photograph, the story doesn’t get into the paper,” he says.
“It is the public’s right to see images of the people who have committed the most serious crimes. I spent a couple of hours with a judge over from Norway who asked to speak to me. He was amazed that we couldn’t get photographs. In Norway the photographer is invited into the court to take pictures of them in the dock. A photographer could be vetted, and positioned into the bowels of the court. There should be some formalised way of doing it. It would help to make the courts less secret than they are.”
His campaigning spirit and passion will clearly not fade with his retirement, and with influence still rippling through the legal and journalistic world, it seems likely that McWhinnie’s footsteps will resonate round the High Court for some time to come.