Journalists are never so ugly as when absorbed by self-importance and vanity, when they assume that what is in their interest must necessarily also be in the public interest. Such attitudes, despite what they intend, weaken the case for necessary law reform.

Take the suppression orders that until Tuesday prevented the Australian media from reporting the December conviction of Cardinal George Pell on child sexual abuse charges. The reporting of the verdict has been accompanied by some spectacularly ignorant criticism of the judge, Peter Kidd, for suppressing the details until now.

As some have pointed out, the suppression was because Pell faced further charges, and Kidd believed the saturation media coverage of the first verdict would inevitably prejudice that future trial. The suppression order has been dropped because the second trial is not going ahead.

In an extraordinarily ignorant tweet, Noah Shachtman, the editor of the Daily Beast (which was one of the first to report the conviction despite the suppression order), described the suppression as a “government gag order” while boasting about the Beast’s contemptuous coverage. Deary me.

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Is the public really meant to trust journalists who so fundamentally misunderstand what they are dealing with?

There are two kinds of issue here, both important and both being obscured by journalistic hubris.

The first is to do with principle – that courts must be allowed to do their work, but that this must be weighed with the vital importance of open justice.

It is easy to understand why Kidd feared the media publicity and its effect. If all the awful details published in the past 24 hours had been in the media before the second trial, it is hard to imagine how it could have gone ahead fairly.

Consider this: if media publicity had prevented or delayed a second trial of Pell, what would the journalists now boasting about their courage say to the complainants – the alleged victims and survivors who had screwed up their courage over many weary years so as to have their day in court?

The second set of issues is pragmatic – whether suppression orders and the law of sub judice contempt can work in the modern age. Can anything be suppressed?

The details of Pell’s conviction were published by overseas media despite the Victorian court’s suppression order, and these outlets are arguably beyond the law’s reach – although I understand dozens of them have been sent letters suggesting there may be contempt charges.

Social media, too, defeats suppression orders. Even if media outlets are prosecuted, ordinary citizens are unlikely to be held to account.

The leading text book from which most journos learned their law (Pearson and Polden’s The Journalist’s Guide to Media Law) states that the law of sub judice contempt requires that once charges have been laid, reporting of crime should be confined to the “bare facts of the crime … with no information that might … prejudice a future jury”.

Yet for years there has seemed to be an acceptance all round that when a story is big enough, the law must to some extent give way to the pressure of public curiosity. Long before Facebook and Twitter became so powerful, the law of sub judice contempt had become a moveable feast – so unclear, misunderstood and inconsistently enforced that it was (pun intended) brought into contempt.

What is needed, in everyone’s interests, is fair, practical and clear rules, consistently policed. Thankfully the Victorian Law Reform Commission is inquiring into exactly these issues. That inquiry will take into account the recommendations of the earlier Open Courts Act review which recommended a range of improvements to suppression laws, including restricting their use, requiring courts to provide written reasons for imposing them and allowing time for interested parties – including the media – to challenge them.

All this, of course, comes at a time when newsrooms are challenged to cover the courts at all.

The recently retired chief justice of the Victorian supreme court, Marilyn Warren, has lamented that there are fewer experienced court reporters, and as a result “courts can no longer rely solely on the traditional media to … guarantee open justice for the public”. She worried that this had the potential to undermine the right to a fair trial.

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Similar comments have been made overseas, including by Lord Justice Leveson after his investigation into the telephone hacking scandal. He commented: “When I started at the bar, there was a local reporter in every court; that is no longer the case. Society will be less well served as a result.”

So what does all this mean for Pell and the media? I think the important principle of a fair second trial justified a suppression order of some sort.

Yet this was one of the biggest stories in the world. In the digital age, it was inevitable that the news of the conviction would get out, and arguably open justice required that it be so.

A pragmatic response might have been to allow the media to report the fact of the conviction, but not the details of the evidence. This would probably have stuck, given most overseas media outlets were not in court and therefore couldn’t report the evidence in any case.

As for law reform, it is clearly needed, and with it a debate about both the principles and pragmatic realities involved.

In the meantime, today is a reminder of why good media court reporting matters. Sadly it is this kind of non-glamorous daily journalistic work that is being hollowed out as newsrooms decline and the business model that has supported mainstream media breaks.

Against the odds, investigative journalism is in reasonably good shape. In my view they fulfil just as important a function as the investigative journalists, and it could be argued that their cumulative impact is greater. Nobody gets a Walkley award for this kind of journalistic work, but we will miss it when it’s gone.

Returning to the topic of journalistic hubris, some commentators – well, I am talking about Andrew Bolt – have declared that Pell is innocent and the victim of a witch-hunt. Bolt was not in court. Nor was I. Neither of us have had the opportunity to hear and weigh all the evidence. That was the job of the jury. What process, exactly, is Bolt suggesting should have been followed?

This is how we decide guilt and innocence in our community. That is why the protection of the administration of justice is so important – because for all its imperfections it is the best we’ve got.

Some journalists should get over themselves and devote a bit more effort to thinking these things through clearly.