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Journalisted, week ending 3 March 2013, Eastleigh, The Oscars and riots in Bangladesh

JournalistedJournalisted is an independent, not-for-profit website built to make it easier for the public, to find out more about journalists and what they write about. It is run by the Media Standards Trust. It collects information automatically from the websites of British news outlets. Articles are indexed by journalist, based on the byline to the article. Keywords and statistics are automatically generated, and the site searches for any blogs or social bookmarking sites linking to each article. Continue reading

The Leveson Inquiry and the Raucous Press – Julian Petley

Royal Courts of JusticeDemocracies require an unlovable press. They need journalists who get in the face of power’. So says Michael Schudson, one of America’s foremost media scholars, in a recent collection of essays, and most journalists would wholeheartedly agree. Such sentiments were much in evidence in the pre-emptive nuclear strike mounted by the press in the run-up to the publication in November 2012 of Lord Justice Leveson’s report into the culture, practices and ethics of the British press. Continue reading

Case Law: Tesla Motors v BBC, Top Gear up before Top Judges – Rosalind English

Top GearIn the case of Tesla Motors v BBC ([2013] EWCA Civ 152) the Court of Appeal refused an appeal against the strike out of a libel claim against the BBC in relation to a review of an electric sports car by the “Top Gear” programme. The judge below had been correct in concluding that there was no sufficient prospect of the manufacturer recovering a substantial sum of damages such as to justify continuing the case to trial. Continue reading

‘The elephant next door’: new report on media ownership abroad – Media Reform Coalition

media-reform coalitionThe Media Reform Coalition has published a new report on media ownership and plurality laws from across the world – in the belief that Britain has something to learn from them.

The report, titled ‘The Elephant Next Door: a survey of international media ownership regulations’, summarises the broad international support that exists for plurality laws, and then examines regulations from across the world on national, local, foreign and cross-media holdings. Continue reading

Leveson, the Press and the Separation of Powers – Jacob Rowbottom

jacob.rowbottomLast Friday I heard Lord Hoffmann give the annual Neill lecture in Oxford, talking about the separation of powers. One of his points was that there had been too much fuss about the ‘breaches’ of the separation of powers that existed prior to the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. Lord Hoffmann argued that the old role of the Lord Chancellor sitting in Cabinet did not threaten judicial independence. Continue reading

Case Law, Northern Ireland, AB Ltd v Facebook Ireland, Libel damages for anonymous posts

On 6 February 2013 Mr Justice McCloskey in the High Court of Northern Ireland handed down judgment in the case of AB Ltd and Ors v Facebook Ireland Ltd ([2013] NIQB 14).  We had a post about this decision on 9 February 2013.  The case concerned what the judge described as a “campaign of public vilification and harassment of the second, third and fourth named plaintiffs by way of publications made upon the Facebook website.” [5]  The full judgment is now available.  Continue reading

Case Law: Waterson v Lloyd, honest comment and political discussion – Edward Craven

Nigel Waterson MPOn 28 February 2013 the Court of Appeal delivered judgment in Waterson v Lloyd [2013] EWCA Civ 136. The decision grapples, once again, with the elusive distinction between fact and comment in the law of defamation. By a majority, the Court of Appeal held that publications by a political candidate criticizing his opponent’s ‘scandalous’ parliamentary expenses claims were statements of comment, rather than statements of fact. Continue reading

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