It is likely that Ms. Carol Palmer, Permanent Secretary in the justice ministry, has not thought about such things as press access to the courts, or thought deeply about them. Nor, we suspect, have the magistrates who have enforced those patently restrictive rules against journalists covering their courts.

In the case of Ms. Palmer, she betrays a lack of a textured appreciation of the role of the press and/or of theevolution of the relationship between the press and the community in the context of a liberal democracy.

So, when reporters complain about poor seating in the Half-Way Tree Resident Magistrate's Court and the order that reporters not be provided with information from case files, her response is a metaphoric shrug of the shoulder.

"We have to recognise that our justice system and the operations of the court were set up for the parties to the dispute and their attorneys, the judge sitting in adjudication of the matter," Ms. Palmer told reporters. "Anybody else was considered a spectator."

By Ms. Palmer's reckoning, any change will just have to await a reform of the justice system what this means and when it will happen remain anybody's guess.

The recent grumpy retort by a magistrate to a reporter, who sat near the front of the court so as to better hear and follow the proceedings, was even less cerebral. No one claims for the press a role or place beyond the right of the individual to freedom of expression as contained in Section 22 of the Constitution of Jamaica. It is upon these rights and freedoms that the press superimposes its technology, which provides its capacity for amplification; that is, an ability to reach large audiences via radio/electronic signals, and the capacity of the printing press to reproduce in large volumes. The ultimate protection of democracy rests on free expression, which is clearly understood by liberal thinkers, including those who framed the Jamaican constitution.

It is in this context that the free press and liberal democratic society arrive at an unwritten but mutually beneficial compact. The press needs these freedoms for its own existence, just as the society needs them for the maintenance of an expressed form of government. The press, therefore, helps to provide transparency by playing the role of watchdog; it uses its capacity for amplification to sound the alarm bells if and when these rights and freedoms come under stress. That is part of the context in which a liberal democratic society affords the press the privilege of access. For transparency is democracy's insurance policy; and it is important in all arms of government.

Indeed, it was not by accident that, except in specific circumstances, the critical institutions of the Parliament and the court are open to the public. Justice is not a secret or private matter, or as so famously put, "a cloistered virtue".

When the journalist turns up at a hearing, the understanding is that he or she is, in part, proxy for the public. Even if this point is burdensome to the magistrates and Ms. Palmer, it is an argument we expect to be grasped by the Justice Minister and Attorney-General, Mr. Nicholson.