The business of the law can tend to harden the heart – but every now and then a case comes along that drives off the spectre of compassion fatigue. This was the effect of a recent libel claim in which I obtained substantial damages and published apologies for a 20-year-old Afghan refugee, Abdul Shizad, who – despite being entirely alone in the UK and having limited English – had the courage to sue the Daily Express, which had falsely accused him of being a “Taliban Suspect”.
The International Forum for Responsible Media Blog
Month: February 2014 (Page 7 of 7)
Last week was Week 12 of the phone hacking trial at the Old Bailey and perhaps the most interesting so far. Peter Jukes’ live tweets provided minute by minute updates of some gripping evidence. On Monday 27 January 2014 the Court heard evidence from the actor Jude Law.
In a recent statement the Society of Editors asserted that Hacked Off was wrong to say that the Press Complaints Commission (“PCC”) had been discredited in the Leveson Report. But it is the Society of Editors that is wrong. Continue reading
This week saw the announcement of half-year results from BSkyB. There was a slight dent in its relentless profitability following recent competition from BT for Premier League rights, but very little deviation from the last full-year results: annual revenues of £7.2 billion with an annual operating profit of £1.3 billion. One and a third billion is an awful lot of spare cash to be generating each year. Continue reading
The replacement of Directive 95/26/EC – the bedrock of data protection in Europe – with a new Regulation is intended as a radical overhaul, making protections for personal data fit for the digital world. It has now been over two years since the first substantive draft of that Regulation was made public. I dimly recall Tim Pitt-Payne and I summarising it – see here. Continue reading
The committee chosen to set up a press self-regulator in defiance of the Leveson Inquiry recommendations has refused to meet victims of press abuse. Sir Hayden Phillips, who chairs the appointments panel for IPSO, the successor to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) being prepared by the big newspaper companies, said any meeting with victims would be ‘inappropriate’ and ‘we cannot enter into a debate with you’. Continue reading
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