Social media users warned against committing contempt on posts

The UK attorney general has published guidelines to help prevent users of social media from committing contempt of court while posting comments on legal cases.

According to Dominic Grieve Queen's Counsel, guidelines were aimed at ensuring fair trials.

Peaches Geldof recently had to apologise for tweets relating to a case, while last year several people had to pay fines for naming a woman raped by footballer Ched Evans.

The advice would apply to court cases in England and Wales.

The rise of social media had meant that conversations about criminal cases that took place in informal settings were now instantly published online - and could be shared with thousands, according to BBC legal correspondent Clive Coleman.

There was a public misconception that the internet was somehow a free speech zone to which criminal and civil law did not apply, which the guidelines aimed at correcting.

The attorney general had acted against three men who used Twitter and Facebook to publish photographs purporting to be of Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, the murderers of the toddler James Bulger, as grown-ups, which was in breach of a worldwide injunction against  publication of any material that could identify the two killers.

The guidelines warn that comment on a particular case needed to comply with the Contempt of Court Act 1981. The notes are designed to help inform the public about the legal pitfalls of commenting in a way that could be seen as prejudicial to a case.

The attorney general has so far, issued 10 media advisories this year, the most ever issued by his office.

The notes had previously been issued only to print and broadcast media outlets on a 'not for publication' basis in certain cases.

According to Grieve, "Blogs and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook mean that individuals can now reach thousands of people with a single tweet or post. This is an exciting prospect, but it can pose certain challenges to the criminal justice system."

"In days gone by, it was only the mainstream media that had the opportunity to bring information relating to a court case to such a large group of people that it could put a court case at risk. That is no longer the case, and is why I have decided to publish the advisories that I have previously only issued to the media," said Grieve.