John Yates has previous

When I was a young reporter on the London Evening Standard nearly 40 years ago I spent a lot of time in the press room at Scotland Yard, not learning very much. By some mysterious process of osmosis between detectives and the leading crime correspondents, details of that dramatic armed robbery in Croydon would be all over the front pages while the Yard’s official spokesmen were still confined to talking lamely about ‘an incident on Purley Way which required police attendance’.

I do not know how much has changed. In our 24/7 media world everything is sharper and faster. Dawn raids have TV crews primed to film the drama, sometimes to the anger of innocent communities. Potentially significant details about suspects, along with photos and even CCTV footage, appear in the newspapers, or on the evening news. Juries eventually get to see grainy film of how the gunman ran amok, as it happened.