Last Friday, 28 May 2010, Mr Justice Tugendhat ordered that the trial in the case of Fiddes v Channel Four should be by judge alone. The case concerns a documentary purporting to show members of Michael Jackson’s family moving to Devon and the claimant accuses the defendants of “faking” certain elements of the programme. The trial is due to begin on 14 June 2010 and would have been the first libel jury trial since Desmond v Bower, which concluded on 22 July 2009. Continue reading
The International Forum for Responsible Media Blog
Month: May 2010 (Page 1 of 4)
In this regular feature we draw attention to the last week’s law and media news and next week’s upcoming events. If readers have any news or events which they would like to draw attention to please add them by way of comments on this post. We are particularly interested in forthcoming events.
News
We have already commented on the two biggest media law stories of the week. First, there was the Duchess of York’s exposure by a “News of the World” sting. The issue of the public interest justification for this operation was discussed by us in a posting, which was subsequently republished on the “Guardian Legal Network”. This was, in turn, picked up by Roy Greenslade on his blog. Continue reading
As Max Mosley marches to Strasbourg to ask Europe’s human rights court to force the media to give individuals advance warning of salacious stories, Amber Melville-Brown rounds up the current privacy state of play across the continent
‘You have been found guilty of invasion of privacy. Bailiffs, take them down.’ An unlikely utterance from a judge – save in those countries where the authorities flinch at the concept of freedom of speech – but a recent Italian case has surprisingly resulted in prison sentences for three defendants over their involvement in privacy invasions. Continue reading
French privacy law is well known to provide strong protection against media intrusion, even for celebrities behaving badly. We have discussed the outlines of the law in an earlier post. “Public interest” considerations in general do not justify the disclosure of “private misbehaviour”. The French law of privacy is seen by some as a more appropriate way in which to deal with the balance between privacy and freedom of expression. At the Gray’s Inn forum on “Gagging the Media” earlier this year (see our post here) playwright Tom Stoppard described Bénédicte Paviot’s account of the privacy position in France as “sounding like civilisation”. Continue reading
Lord Lester’s much heralded Defamation Bill (see our earlier post) has been published today. This is Private Members’ Bill, introduced by the Lib Dem peer in an attempt to assist the Government in its libel reform proposals. There is a Press Release which tells that the Bill Continue reading
Lord Steyn gave the 3rd Annual Boydell Lecture on 26 May 2010 in Inner Temple Hall on the topic of “Defamation and Privacy: Momentum for Substantive and Procedural Change” – (abandoning his announced title of “Litigation Tourism: Defamation and Privacy“). The lecture focussed on the decision in Reynolds v Times Newspapers ([2001] 2 AC 127) – a case in which he was a member of the Judicial Committee. In Reynolds he agreed with the rest of the Committee that a new form of “qualified privilege defence” should be available to the media – although he dissented on the facts, favouring a retrial. In his lecture he was critical of the decision – pointing out that the subsequent decision in Jameel v Wall Street Journal ([2007] 1 AC 359) retained the basic Reynolds approach. Continue reading
The review of the law of libel did not get a mention in the Queen’s Speech but the indefatigable Lib Dem peer Lord Lester of Herne Hill QC is this week presenting a draft private member’s Defamation Bill to the House of Lords with the strong support of the media. Continue reading
On Sunday 23 May 2010 the “News of the World” published what it described as “Cash for Royal Access Sensation”. In a story by its “investigations editor”, Mazher Mahmood (the so-called “fake sheikh“), it reported that the Duchess of York was “shamelessly plotting to sell access to her trade envoy ex-hubby Prince Andrew for £500,000″. The paper had video footage of the Duchess taking money. She had been the victim of a classic “sting”, with a reporter posing as a “rich businessman” who was seeking access to her former husband, Prince Andrew, and paid US$40,000 down-payment in cash. Continue reading
The blogosphere has a rich seam of “media related” blogs, many of which engage in serious critical analysis of the contents of our leading newspapers. We suspect that many of our lawyer readers are not familiar with this material – which often demonstrates better and sharper journalism than is to be found in publications being discussed. In this post we will discuss some of the more active blogs which deal with the “mainstream media”. We do not claim to be definitive or comprehensive – there are a lot of blogs which discuss the media and they come and go very quickly. But we hope to introduce some of our readers to an area of the blogosphere which may have passed them by. Continue reading
In this regular feature we draw attention to the last week’s law and media news and next week’s upcoming events. If readers have any news or events which they would like to draw attention to please add them by way of comments on this post. We are particularly interested in forthcoming events. Continue reading
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