The Times newspaper greeted the start of 2017 by warning: “The freedom of the press is under direct and immediate threat.” Its Murdoch stablemate, The Sun, went further by identifying the “sinister zealots behind regulators [who] want to destroy the popular press”. Continue reading
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The International Forum for Responsible Media Blog
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New Zealand courts heard several trials and important interlocutory battles in 2016. Political defamation cases were a feature. The most prominent case was that brought by Taxpayers’ Union director Jordan Williams against former Conservative Party leader Colin Craig. Continue reading
The corporate press has, in recent weeks, been heavily promoting an anti-Leveson campaign called “FreeThePress”. This is described by the News Media Association as a group of “Free speech campaigners and activists concerned about the threat to press freedom”. The website was set up by the Trotskyists-turned-libertarians of “Spiked” magazine but provides no details as to its members or supporters and appears to be financed by the newspapers. Continue reading
The last year was a relatively quiet one in the English media law courts, with only two defamation trials involving the media (and none involving the national press). The most high profile case of the year was the privacy injunction in PJS v NGN. Our case comment on the original injunction attracted a record number of visitors. Continue reading
While most of us don’t trust journalists, many of us are still under the illusion that we have a free and independent press. The truth is we don’t. Here’s five reasons why we should be very sceptical of the information we read in the corporate media and why there is hope for the future. Continue reading
Over the past few weeks the national press has ramped up its dishonest and unprincipled campaign against the implementation of the Leveson recommendations. It finances and promotes something called “Free the Press” – which, among other things, offers a series of misleading and inaccurate graphics to place in anti-Leveson articles. Continue reading
The 21 December 2016 judgment in these important cases concerns the acceptability from a human rights perspective of national data retention legislation maintained even after the striking down of the Data Retention Directive in Digital Rights Ireland (Case C-293/12 and 594/12) (“DRI”) for being a disproportionate interference with the rights contained in Articles 7 and 8 EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (EUCFR). Continue reading
Now that the legal term has ended, Inforrm is taking a winter break for a few weeks to allow the editorial team to relax. We will have a some occasional posts over the next fortnight but the full normal service will not be resumed until the second week of January 2017. Continue reading
Over the weekend, Facebook sent me a link to a video they had made of my activity on their site over the last year. To my mind, that was more proof, if any were needed, that Facebook is a media company, despite all its protestations. Continue reading
In the case of Flymenow Ltd v Quick Air Jet Charter GmbH [2016] EWHC 3197 (QB) an aircraft charter company was awarded nominal damages of £10 in a libel action after it was found that it had acted “disgracefully” before and during the litigation. Continue reading
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