It is sometimes said that newspapers shouldn’t be regulated at all, that the law alone should be enough to set limits on the culture, ethics and practices of the press. If only the police had done their job properly, this argument runs, there would never have been any call for the Leveson Inquiry and the Royal Charter. Continue reading
The International Forum for Responsible Media Blog
Month: October 2013 (Page 2 of 8)
The phone hacking saga has now moved back to the centre of the news agenda. Next week the first phone hacking trial begins. This has already been dubbed the “trial of the century”. We had a post yesterday about the forthcoming trial. Continue reading
Phone Hacking “Trial of the Century” begins tomorrow: eight defendants face a total of seven charges
The first phone-hacking trial begins next week before Mr Justice Saunders and a jury in Court 12 at the Central Criminal Court (the “Old Bailey”) in London on Monday 28 October 2013. The first day or two are expected to be taken up with legal argument and the selection of the jury so the prosecution opening is not likely to begin until Tuesday or Wednesday. The trial is expected to last at least 4 months. Continue reading
In the case of R (on the application of) Fagan v Secretary of State for Justice [2013] EWCA Civ 1275) the Court of Appeal held that only “clear and cogent evidence” that it was strictly necessary to keep an offender’s identity confidential would lead a court to derogate from the principle of open justice. The possibility of a media campaign that might affect the offender’s resettlement could not work as a justification for banning reporting about that offender, even though a prominent and inaccurate report about him had already led to harassment of his family. Continue reading
It has recently come to our attention that some of our older readers are not aware of Inforrm’s presence on Twitter – @Inforrm. We began by tweeting Inforrm posts but, recently we have sought to expand our coverage by tweeting links to media and law stories as they appear. Some of these can be found at the end of this post. Continue reading
The Privy Council is set to decide on the cross-party Royal Charter on 30 October. This date is fast approaching, but Leo Watkins of Enders Analysis looks at the political considerations involved and argues that, even if granted next week, the Charter would not result in a new press regulator until autumn 2015. Continue reading
The Telegraph and Mail papers and the Murdoch press are unrelenting in their opposition to the Leveson reforms, as embodied in the Royal Charter on the press. Although concession after concession has been made in the effort to accommodate them it makes no difference: they just say no. Continue reading
On 10 October, in what was seen as a setback for the practice of allowing anonymous comments on websites in Europe, the European Court of Human Rights upheld a national ruling in Estonia that found a news portal liable for offensive comments posted by users on its website. Emma Goodman, co-author of a recent report on comment moderation practices looks at the implications of this ruling. Continue reading
Trolling is an artificial construct and much misunderstood: see Clare Brown’s article here. So it is no surprise to find the absence of any consistent law governing conduct on the internet as a whole. The internet transcends boundaries in a way that most national laws do not. Continue reading
Seven international media organisations wrote to the Queen yesterday to say that she should block the Royal Charter on the press that has been endorsed by all parties in Parliament and is due to be ‘granted‘ at a Privy Council session next Wednesday. The letter is ill-informed and misguided. Below is the text with our commentary in red italics. Continue reading
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