In a judgment handed down on 4 February 2013 ([2013] EWHC 145 (QB)) Mr Justice Eady awarded the former Conservative Party treasurer, Peter Cruddas, defamation damages of £45,000 in respect of 9 blogs and 12 tweets by published by lobbyist Mark Adams. Continue reading
The International Forum for Responsible Media Blog
Tag: Twitter (Page 7 of 7)
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
As we pointed out last week, Lord McAlpine’s reputation was severely damaged by the event surrounding the ill-conceived Newsnight broadcast of 2 November 2012. That damage was caused in part by the publication on Twitter of material which linked him to the unidentified individual mentioned in the broadcast. Lord McAlpine was plainly entitled to have his reputation restored. This was, in practice, substantially achieved by the apology given by the BBC on 10 November 2012. Continue reading
It has the makings of a pub quiz question: What do Sally Bercow, Nick Griffin, Lalit Modi, George Monbiot and Rupert Murdoch have in common? (And please don’t answer this question by way of Twitter). For the purposes of this article, they are some recent examples of those finding themselves in legal trouble on Twitter. They are unlikely to be the last. Continue reading
Is there a link between the BBC crisis and Leveson? Does the fate of George Entwistle teach us lessons about regulated journalism? Yesterday’s papers were fumbling for the connection.
In the Observer, the headline on Peter Preston’s media column declares: ‘While Leveson’s in his bunker, the media’s in chaos’. Dominic Lawson writes in the Sunday Times under the headline: ‘Forget a press gag, it’s Twitter we must police.’ Continue reading
This week a teenager from Lancashire was sent to prison for making sick and incredibly distasteful jokes on his facebook page concerning missing 5 year old April Jones and Madeline Macann. Matthew Woods, who is 19 years old, is said to have adapted the jokes from Sickapedia, a website which publishes sick jokes, and posted them ‘in a moment of drunken stupidity’. Woods pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12 weeks imprisonment. Continue reading
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has decided not to charge Daniel Thomas for posting a homophobic message on Twitter, the social networking site, about the swimmer Tom Daley. The press release, which takes the form of an extended quote from the Director of Public Prosecutions, is fascinating. I have reproduced it in full below. Continue reading
Tweeting journalists were preoccupied by the Leveson Inquiry from April to June 2012, according to research findings published by PR consultancy Portland, using data collected by the media platform Tweetminster.
While social media influence and content measures should always be treated with care because of the methodological difficulties, this summary report provides a useful indication of topics dominating the journalistic Twittersphere in the last quarter and year. Continue reading
We have previously drawn attention to Gary Hayes’ “Counter” for Social Media use which shows the amount of social media activity taking place at any given moment. This can be found at the bottom of this post. It suggests that our blog post today was one of over 2 million posted worldwide in the past 24 hours – along with 175 million tweets and an astonishing 3.2 billion likes and comments on Facebook. Continue reading
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