The internet may have been the elephant in Courtroom 73 during the Leveson Inquiry hearings, but it was the central theme of a series of presentations at JUSTICE’s ‘Life and the Law Online’ event on Tuesday 20 November, chaired by Rosemary Jay, senior attorney, Hunter & Williams. Continue reading
The International Forum for Responsible Media Blog
Month: November 2012 (Page 3 of 7)
Myth 1 – Only celebrities and politicians suffer at the hands of popular papers.
To an extent, we already know how false this is. There are victims like the Dowlers, like the families of the little girls murdered at Soham, like the families of soldiers killed in Afghanistan, like the victims of the London bombings. They were all identified as capable of making a commercial profit for certain newspapers, and therefore had their privacy invaded. Continue reading
The extraordinary story of Lord McAlpine’s libel settlements continues. The former Conservative Party Treasurer has settled his claims against Philip Schofield and ITV for £125,000. The claims arose out of a “This Morning programme” broadcast on 8 November 2012 during which the presenter handed the prime minister a list of names of alleged abusers he had found on the internet. Continue reading
The date of publication of the long awaited Leveson Report into the culture, practices and ethics of the press has been announced. Lord Justice Leveson will publish his Report on Thursday 29 November 2012. Continue reading
Libel reform campaigners have long argued for the inclusion of a “strong public interest” defence in the Defamation Bill. The current version of the Defamation Bill contains, in clause 4, a defence of “Responsible Publication in the Public Interest” – which is a codification of the common law “Reynolds” defence. Although this is not wholly satisfactory it does, at least, focus attention on the need properly to investigate and verify allegations before publication. Continue reading
Journalisted is an independent, not-for-profit website built to make it easier for the public, to find out more about journalists and what they write about. It is run by the Media Standards Trust. It collects information automatically from the websites of British news outlets. Articles are indexed by journalist, based on the byline to the article. Keywords and statistics are automatically generated, and the site searches for any blogs or social bookmarking sites linking to each article. Continue reading
Lord Justice Leveson faces far more challenges in preparing his Report than those who prepared the Finkelstein Report and the Convergence Review in Australia. The environment in the UK is entirely different. Continue reading
In Silicon Valley, Google’s legal representatives will now be reinventing their business models, acquainting themselves with Australian defamation law and generally wincing, as for what seems to be the first time, a common law court has determined that, for the purposes of defamation, Google can be treated as a publisher of its search engine results. Continue reading
In its diatribe against Common Purpose, the Mail notes that the organisation ‘has attracted the obsessive attention of the more outré internet conspiracy theorists such as David Icke, as well as bloggers on the far Right. This has provided a convenient smokescreen against a more rational investigation’. Continue reading
The Crown Prosecution Service announced this morning that four former News International editors and journalists will stand trial on charges of conspiring to commit misconduct in public office. Continue reading
Recent Judgments
© 2026 Inforrm's Blog
Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑