On Friday 4 November 4, 2016 a Charlottesville federal jury found Rolling Stone magazine liable for defaming Nicole Eramo, the former Associate Dean of the University of Virginia (“UVA”), in its now infamous article “A Rape on Campus”. Eramo sued Rolling Stone and the author of the story, Sabrine Erdely, for $7.5 million in reputational damages. Continue reading
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The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights today handed down judgment in the case of Magyar Helsinki Bizottság v. Hungary (application no. 18030/11). It held (15:2) that there is an Article 1o right to public access to information where access to the information is instrumental for the individual’s exercise of his or her right to freedom of expression. Continue reading
The conviction and sentencing of the “Fake Sheikh”, former News of the World journalist Mazher Mahmood, has led to renewed reports of possible legal actions against him and his former employers. It is said that these could “dwarf” phone hacking claims. It has been reported that the Duchess of York has commenced legal action and that Mr Mahmood and his former employers, News Group Newspapers Limited, face more than 40 civil claims. Continue reading
When some media coverage of last week’s High Court decision pitched judges as enemies or opponents of the people, the Lord Chancellor’s initial silence attracted, hour by hour, a louder chorus of demands that she speak up in defence of the judiciary. Continue reading
As chair of IPSO, the tame regulator set up by the corporate national papers, Sir Alan Moses is responsible for upholding a code of practice which says, among other things, that journalists must take care not to be inaccurate. And yet he seems to have trouble being accurate himself. Continue reading
The most striking legal story of the week was the reporting of the Administrative Court’s ruling on Article 50 and the Royal Prerogative ([2016] EWHC 2768 (Admin)). Hysteria broke out across the Europhobic tabloid press with the judges being dubbed “the enemies of the people”. Continue reading
In the case of Douglas v McLernon ([2016] WASC 320), the Supreme Court of Western Australia awarded its highest level of general damages to date and has granted a permanent injunction as a result of the “brazen content” of a series of defamatory online publications. Continue reading
Not only has the digital age drastically changed our modes of communication, but the proliferation of the Internet has effectively expanded the global publisher population. Gone are the days when publishers only worked for large, corporate publishing houses. Nowadays, everyone is a publisher, and thereby a critic. Continue reading
A cross section of over 50 faith leaders, civil society leaders and other leading figures have signed a joint letter to Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail, in response to the paper’s divisive reporting on dangerous driving this week, which targeted ‘foreign’ truckers. Continue reading
Some of the reaction to the Article 50 judgment in the High Court is frankly frightening. Do pro-Brexit politicians and journalists attach any value at all to what we call the “rule of law” or the “independence of the judiciary”? Or are they out simply to bully the court’s judges and whip up hatred against them? Continue reading
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