We need to do away with these libel laws, says Meirion Jones in The Guardian, because they only protect evildoers and they stop us, the press, from bringing them to justice. I can reveal, he continued, that The Sun could have brought Jimmy Savile to justice in 2008 but the threat of libel action meant that all the testimony they collected was wasted and so, since the chance of a scoop was gone, they did nothing with it… Continue reading
The International Forum for Responsible Media Blog
Tag: Paul Wragg (Page 1 of 3)
Freedom of speech is quite the enigma. Just ask Laura Murray. When Rachel Riley retweeted, with embellishments, Owen Jones’s comment that if you don’t want to be pelted with eggs, you shouldn’t be a Nazi, moments after Corbyn had himself been pelted, his stakeholder manager lambasted Riley. Not unreasonably, Murray took Riley to be both condoning violence toward politicians and to be labelling Corbyn a Nazi. Continue reading
Terabytes of sensitive financial data have been stolen by cyber hackers and supplied, on a massive scale, to large numbers of journalists who appear to believe that there is a public interest in trawling through private information. Continue reading
On 30 August 2021 it was announced that the privacy claim brought by Ben and Deborah Stokes against the Sun had been settled, with the newspaper agreeing to apologise and pay substantial damages. This was a complete victory for the claimants nearly two years after an intrusive and deeply upsetting front page article about the claimants. Continue reading
Piers Morgan’s ignominious exit from Good Morning Britain presents an ideal moment to reflect upon the meaning and nature of free speech. Continue reading
In a newly published book, A Free and Regulated Press, I ask: why are newspapers not regulated on a compulsory basis, as broadcasters are? There are several pragmatic reasons, of course, but what, if any, are the principled reasons? Continue reading
The public interest defence advanced by Associated Newspapers Limited (“ANL”) comes in three different flavours, none more satisfying than the previous ones. Continue reading
Having read through the Defence which was recently filed by Associated Newspapers Ltd (“ANL”) in the case brought by Meghan Markle I was surprised to see it describe aspects of the Duchess of Sussex’s claim as ‘confused and incoherent’ (para 17) and other parts as ‘irrelevant’. Continue reading
In June 2019, Brian Cathcart and Paddy French published a report which accused Andrew Norfolk and The Times of an anti-Muslim bias in its reporting. They mention three articles specifically. Of these, two resulted in complaints to IPSO, both of which were upheld. In the first, Tower Hamlets v The Times, the newspaper was ‘ordered’ to publish a summary of the adjudication. Continue reading
Judges have their role to play, and Parliamentarians theirs, and “it is for the public to judge whether what I have done is right or wrong”, says Lord Peter Hain. Yet since Lord Hain chose to breach the court injunction issued by the Court of Appeal in ABC v Telegraph Group plc by hiding behind Parliamentary privilege, this is exactly what the public does not get to do. Continue reading
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