Tommy Robinson found guilty. Andrew Lawton reports.
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
158.4507
Summary
A judge has found Tommy Robinson guilty of three counts of contempt of court, and he will be sentenced on July 11th, the same day as Canada and the UK co-host a press freedom conference. This is a sad day for freedom of speech.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
I'm outside the Old Bailey in downtown London. We've just wrapped day two of Tommy Robinson's
00:00:14.720
trial and it ended with a finding. Three guilty findings of contempt of court delivered by Dame
00:00:21.360
Victoria Sharp, the presiding justice, the president of the court of Queen's Bench,
00:00:25.760
found Tommy Robinson guilty on all three counts, one of which was filming defendants, the other was
00:00:31.120
questioning them on their way into the courtroom, and the other was violating what's known as a
00:00:35.120
section two order. Now no reasons were provided for the decision. Those are going to be delivered
00:00:40.480
in the coming days in written form, but suffice it to say Tommy is not just being found guilty,
00:00:45.760
but will be sentenced at a hearing in exactly one week on July 11th, which coincidentally is the same
00:00:52.320
day that just a few miles from here the United Kingdom government is co-hosting a press freedom
00:00:58.400
conference, a media freedom conference that I was already going to be covering. So we have on the
00:01:02.880
same day that Canada and the UK co-host a press freedom conference, the government sentencing
00:01:08.720
someone for reporting on a case that the mainstream media was ignoring. Behind me you can see and hear
00:01:15.360
Tommy Robinson supporters very angry. It got very heated when news of the verdict was initially seeping
00:01:20.880
through the crowd. It seems to have calmed down a little bit now, but what was so central to this
00:01:25.600
case was that Tommy Robinson wanted to defend journalistic freedom. He was there out of
00:01:31.920
journalistic inquiry and now that has been censured by the United Kingdom government. We're going to
00:01:38.080
have more on this in the coming days and weeks, but it is a very sad day for freedom of speech. For True