The Inforrm blog is taking a break from regular posting over the summer. We thank all our readers and contributors who, over the past three and a half years, have made this into one of the world’s leading media law blogs. The blog has now had over 1.6 million page views since February 2010. The blog has 900 followers and there are 1,892 followers of our twitter feed (@inforrm).
We have published 592 posts over the past year and 1889 in total from several dozen different contributors. We have sought to cover the full range of media and law issues – from the “libel reform” debate, through “super injunction spring” into the “phone hacking firestorm” and “War of Leveson’s Report”. At the same time, we have tried to keep up a regular flow of reports and comments on the case law and other legal developments.
In our Summer Break 2011 post we suggested that privacy was the topic of the first few months of 2011 – ending with the report of Lord Neuberger’s Committee on Super-Injunctions – “Super-Injunctions, Anonymised Injunctions and Open Justice” (discussed in a post at the time) and then the extraordinary period of “May Madness“. We went on to deal with the extraordinary speed with which phone hacking broke out of its broadsheet ghetto and came to dominate the news agenda and the establishment of the Leveson Inquiry.
In our Summer Break 2012 post we reported that the Leveson Inquiry had dominated the agenda for the previous 12 months, noting that after “super-injunction spring” there was a dramatic decline in privacy injunctions.
The past twelve months have been dominated by the “”War of Leveson’s Report” – with 135 posts in the “Leveson Inquiry” category over this period. But this has also been the year in which the long awaited Defamation Act 2013 was finally passed by Parliament and the year of Lord McAlpine’s lucrative libel claims. In addition, there were a number of controversies about photographs of naked Royals … All these and many other media and law stories have been extensively covered on Inforrm over the past year.
The several of the year’s hot topics are reflected in the list of top ten posts of the past year:
La Regina Nuda and Italian Privacy Law – Athalie Matthews and Giacomo Parmigiani
The BBC, Lord McAlpine and Libel Law
The Mail and the naked prince – Brian Cathcart
Leveson and Legality: implementation of the Report would not be Illegal – Hugh Tomlinson QC
Libel damages and Lord McAlpine: did the BBC pay too much?
Public interest and the Prince – the Sun fails the responsibility test
Privacy, Monstering and the Press: the case of Lucy Meadows
Kate’s boobs, Harry’s bum and the Sun’s daft logic – Brian Cathcart
Briefing Note on Exemplary Damages and Costs – Gill Phillips
Finally, we remind readers that we welcome posts on media and legal issues from outside contributors. The purpose of the blog is provide a forum for discussion of the issues and we welcome all points of view and from all countries. If you are interested in contributing please contact Inforrm at our email address: inforrmeditorial@googlemail.com.
We will be returning to regular posting in the second half of September. In the meantime, we wish everyone a relaxing summer break.
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