On Wednesday morning, just before the supreme court ruled on the legality of the government's "back-to-work" schemes, I had a word with a senior member of the court's communications team. He explained that it was part of his job to monitor press coverage of the court's rulings and let journalists know if they had misunderstood what the judges had decided. We sympathised with reporters who sometimes had to provide instant coverage of cases that both sides claimed to have won.

Shortly afterwards, with the aid of the court's admirably clear press release, I reported on Sky News that that Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, had lost his appeal against an earlier ruling. The court held that regulations he made under powers granted to him by parliament were invalid because they failed to describe schemes intended for job-seekers in sufficient detail. On air, I read out a passage from the judgment in which the five judges said their most important function was to ensure that ministers complied with the will of parliament as expressed in statutes. Duncan Smith had not done so. Since he had exceeded his powers, the regulations he had made were invalid.

I commented that this was embarrassing for the secretary of state but not disastrous: he had already made fresh regulations that weren't open to challenge and he had secured legislation to make sure he would not have to repay £130m in benefits lost through the failure of claimants to take up the government's offer of support.

In passing, I think I mentioned that the government had lost on two other points. For completeness, I added that the claimants had failed to establish that they had been required to perform "forced or compulsory labour", which would have been contrary to the human rights convention. This was always a pretty far-fetched claim, it seemed to me, and one the government was able to rebuff with ease.

I then went across the road to parliament, where I was to give evidence to a committee of MPs and peers together with Adam Wagner, the barrister and blogger. The select committee examining the government's draft bill on prisoners' voting rights wanted to ask us about the effect that media reporting of human rights issues had on public opinion.

Before we took our seats, Wagner showed me a tweet just published by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) press office. "Supreme court confirms DWP is able to require claimants to take part in employment programmes that will help them into jobs," it said.

This was true, but hardly the point. The DWP could achieve its aims only because it had introduced new legislation and made new regulations.

Perhaps, I thought, this was a misunderstanding by the DWP press office. Possibly it was a misguided attempt to spin the story. And possibly it was from the spoof account that was created minutes later by someone who claimed the DWP was "beyond parody".

Not at all, it turned out. A glance at the DWP website showed that this comment had been made by the secretary of state himself. "We are very pleased that the supreme court today unanimously upheld our right to require those claiming Jobseeker's Allowance to take part in programmes which will help get them into work," Duncan Smith said.

Very pleased? Pleased that it had lost an unnecessary appeal at no small cost to the taxpayer? As the supreme court said, "it is rather unattractive for the executive to be taking up court time and public money to establish that a regulation is valid, when it has already taken up parliamentary time to enact legislation which retrospectively validates the regulation."

There is a wider point here and it is one that Wagner and I went on to explore with the committee. It is all too easy for complex court rulings to be reported in a way that suits those with a particular agenda. I wrote here recently about how the human rights court is responding to newspaper reports that it regards as seriously misleading.

Courts themselves, like other institutions, are increasingly by-passing the media by publishing press releases online. The start of broadcasting from the court of appeal this week should increase public understanding of how the courts work. And there are still news organisations, like the ones I work for, that strive to report legal affairs in a fair, objective and unbiased way.

My advice to readers is to adopt a degree of scepticism towards media reports – including those for which I am responsible. How plausible do they sound? How likely are they to be affected by error or bias? If you can't cope with a lengthy primary source – the back-to-work judgment is a relatively short 27 pages – then try to read as many different media reports as you can find. Read independent bloggers whose analysis you trust. Don't assume there is only one way of looking at a case.