As the date of publication of the Leveson report approaches the self-interested spin machine of the popular press is going into overdrive. Today’s “Mail on Sunday” headline was “Cameron set to defy Leveson on law to allow state-controlled press… for now.” The story, attributed to “senior sources”, was to the effect that the Prime Minister was Continue reading
Inforrm's Blog
The International Forum for Responsible Media Blog
Page 504 of 652
In a powerful piece on this blog, Charlie Beckett has argued strongly against what he calls “statutory newspaper regulation” and, with evident reluctance, has backed the “evil empire” of the British press. In this post I will argue that he is unrealistic and wrong. Continue reading
One of the many issues to emerge as a result of the McAlpine saga is the question of how vulnerable users of social media like twitter might be under defamation law. Lord McAlpine is reported to be planning to sue up to 10,000 twitter users – and some famous individuals have already been named as among them: George Monbiot, Sally Bercow and Alan Davies. Continue reading
It seems that like cockroaches, British newspapers can survive the nuclear explosion of phone-hacking, plummeting sales, vapourised advertising revenue, a variety of police investigations leading to multiple arrests, and the most searing, gob-smackingly revelatory investigation of their practice, ethics and purpose by a judge. Continue reading
The internet may have been the elephant in Courtroom 73 during the Leveson Inquiry hearings, but it was the central theme of a series of presentations at JUSTICE’s ‘Life and the Law Online’ event on Tuesday 20 November, chaired by Rosemary Jay, senior attorney, Hunter & Williams. Continue reading
Myth 1 – Only celebrities and politicians suffer at the hands of popular papers.
To an extent, we already know how false this is. There are victims like the Dowlers, like the families of the little girls murdered at Soham, like the families of soldiers killed in Afghanistan, like the victims of the London bombings. They were all identified as capable of making a commercial profit for certain newspapers, and therefore had their privacy invaded. Continue reading
The extraordinary story of Lord McAlpine’s libel settlements continues. The former Conservative Party Treasurer has settled his claims against Philip Schofield and ITV for £125,000. The claims arose out of a “This Morning programme” broadcast on 8 November 2012 during which the presenter handed the prime minister a list of names of alleged abusers he had found on the internet. Continue reading
The date of publication of the long awaited Leveson Report into the culture, practices and ethics of the press has been announced. Lord Justice Leveson will publish his Report on Thursday 29 November 2012. Continue reading
Libel reform campaigners have long argued for the inclusion of a “strong public interest” defence in the Defamation Bill. The current version of the Defamation Bill contains, in clause 4, a defence of “Responsible Publication in the Public Interest” – which is a codification of the common law “Reynolds” defence. Although this is not wholly satisfactory it does, at least, focus attention on the need properly to investigate and verify allegations before publication. Continue reading
Journalisted 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
Recent Judgments
© 2026 Inforrm's Blog
Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑