As with the British public, the press is split down the middle over the referendum on membership of the European Union, with five of the major titles backing Remain and the same number supporting Leave. Like many families, the debate has even divided newspaper siblings. The Times and its sister the Sunday Times have chosen to support Remain and Leave respectively, the latter with the kind of editorialising that has come to distinguish it from its daily relative. Continue reading
The International Forum for Responsible Media Blog
Month: June 2016 (Page 2 of 4)
The Western Australia Court of Appeal has recently handed down an interesting decision on the meaning of “publication” in the context of defamatory material posted on the internet. The case is Sims v Jooste (No 2). Continue reading
In Fürst-Pfeifer v Austria, the majority of the Fourth Section of the ECtHR ruled that the applicant’s right to private life was outweighed by the freedom of expression of an online publication and offline newspaper. In one of the fiercest and most poignant dissenting opinions I have read to date, Judges Wojtyczek and Kūris label the majority judgment as “a one-sided, unbalanced and … fundamentally unjust judgment” that “panders to prejudice” against persons, like the applicant, “with a history of mental-health problems”. Continue reading
ARTICLE 19 and concerned experts and academics have urged Dunja Mijatović, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media (“the Representative”), and David Kaye, the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression (“the UN Special Rapporteur”), to address the state of media freedom in the UK, in particular to address attempts to undermine the independence of the BBC, the public service broadcaster, and to ensure the independence of the press in relation to self-regulation. Continue reading
Digital technology has dramatically reshaped the news and media industries in the past decade. We’ve left behind a world where established news brands could rely on reaching large audiences and hence secure advertising revenues. Now there is huge uncertainty about business models, even as digital gives consumers more convenient access to news than ever before. Continue reading
The press was united in horror this week, reacting to the news that Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered outside a constituency surgery. The news was on the front page of every paper the following day, with many publications leading with the statement from her husband: “Jo believed in a better world and she fought for it every day”. Continue reading
The tone and volume of the Brexit debate had been growing steadily more shrill over the past few weeks as Britain got ever closer to its big, once-in-a-generation decision over membership of the EU. The campaign pitted erstwhile political allies against each other in parliament and on the hustings, while in pubs, clubs and family homes friendships and family ties have been sorely tested. Continue reading
In the fraught atmosphere gripping Britain following the killing of Jo Cox MP, there is deep concern about the tone of political debate in the country. There is no suggestion social media played a direct role in the crime, but attention has fallen on how more generally it may foment people’s anger. Continue reading
The Sun’s declaration of support for the Leave campaign in the EU referendum might seem entirely predictable. After all, the paper has been at the forefront of EU-bashing for decades, most memorably in its “Up Yours Delors” headline from 1990 when it stated its forthright views on proposals for a European Currency Unit. Continue reading
In the case of X v Google France and Google Inc (Judgment of 13 May 2016), the Tribunal de grand instance de Paris ordered Google Inc to remove a link to a URL of a blog accusing the applicant of being linked to a sex scandal. Continue reading
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