The IMPRESS Project and the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (CIArb) have launched an arbitration service to resolve media law disputes involving journalists and announced the appointment of Aidan White, Director of the Ethical Journalism Network, as the Chair of the IMPRESS Appointment Panel. Continue reading
The International Forum for Responsible Media Blog
Month: July 2014 (Page 2 of 5)
The Defamation Act 2013 has now been in force for just over six months. That means that practitioners have now had the opportunity to become more familiar with its terms and effect and applying it in practice. There have been few cases arising so far relating to its wording. However, my own view is that the closer one looks at the legislation, the more unwelcome it becomes. Continue reading
The right to access to one’s own “personal data”, subject to certain exemptions and limitations, has now been part of UK law for some 30 years. Under the current Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) an individual dissatisfied with the response to his or her “subject access request” (or “SAR”) can effectively choose whether to enforce those rights via the courts, or via the UK regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”). Continue reading
The former Sunday Mirror and News of the World journalist Dan Evans was, today, sentenced to 10 months’ imprisonment, suspended for one year. Mr Evans had pleaded guilty to two phone hacking offences, misconduct in a public office and perverting the course of justice by lying in a civil claim brought by Kelly Hoppen. Continue reading
Entirely predictably, the verdicts in the hacking trial were taken by most British papers as confirmation that the whole three-year process from the Leveson Inquiry to Scotland Yard’s Operation Weeting to the trial itself had been both a colossal waste of public funds and a draconian threat to press freedom. Continue reading
The Fifth Section of the European Court of Human Rights forcefully reiterated the importance of freedom of expression in the political sphere in the case of Axel Springer AG v Germany (No.2) ([2014] ECHR 745)(French only). The Court held that the German courts had erred in finding that an article commenting on the circumstances in which the former Federal Chancellor of Germany had put an end to his term in office had overstepped the limits of journalistic freedom. Continue reading
In October 2013, I wrote about the recent emergence of revenge porn. This is the increasingly common problem faced by individuals, usually women, on the break-up of a relationship during which they had shared intimate photographs or videos of themselves with their former lover (consensually) and which are then published online (without their consent) in an act of revenge. Continue reading
On 15 July 2014, Mr Justice Nicol handed down judgment assessing libel damages in the case of Kadir v Channel S ([2014] EWHC 2305 (QB)). The claim concerned a broadcast in Bengali which alleged reasonable suspicions of fraud and an evasive response to those allegations to an estimated 3,500 viewers in the UK. Damages were assessed in the sum of £20,000 for each of the two claimants. Continue reading
In the case of SRJ v Persons Unknown ([2014] EWHC 2293 (QB)) a Government contractor has failed in a bid to persuade a judge to order a firm of solicitors to give it the identity of one of its clients who is alleged to have published confidential information in internet blogs. Continue reading
The House of Lords Communications Committee has been hearing oral evidence in its inquiry into social media offences. The inquiry, while not exclusively focused on “revenge porn,” takes place amidst a surge in media coverage on revenge porn in the UK, spurred by MP Maria Miller’s statements in the House of Commons and Justice Secretary Chris Grayling’s promise that the government is looking into the issue. Continue reading
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