First up, libel. A number of cases and articles to flag up:

• Meeja Law>> Ukrainian businessman’s case against a Ukrainian newspaper has been thrown out of court
• Inforrm>> A brief discussion of ‘libel tourism’ in its weekly round up
• Inforrm>> Jury Awards in Defamation Cases in Ireland – Joseph O’Malley
• Press Gazette>> Libel damages for Newsround presenter from Indy
• Index on Censorship>>Four year battle ends for Labour Home Bloggers
• Media Guardian>> Real Climate faces libel suit
• Media Guardian>> Court rules that newspaper does not have to identify commenters
• Inforrm>> Libel, Privacy and Forgetting: Claims by Rehabilitated Offenders – Hugh Tomlinson QC
• Private Eye>> “The most sued man in Britain”
• Press Gazette>> Sikh Holyman libel tourism case finally thrown out
• Press Gazette>> Turkish PM accepts substantial Telegraph libel damages
• Simon Singh>> Despite claims to the contrary, CFAs did not help free speech in BCA v Singh
• Law Gazette>> Lawyer wins £10,000 damages from Solicitors from Hell owner

Court access

• Media Guardian>> Court allows journalists into care hearing

Contempt

• Press Gazette>> Mail and Sun found guilty over gun pics contempt
• UK Human Rights blog>> Warning for bloggers and tweeters as newspapers found guilty of contempt of court
• Media Guardian>> Full judgment: Attorney general v Associated Newspapers and News Group Newspapers

Julian Assange

• Thinq>> WikiLeaks’ Assange applies to trademark his name
• Liberal Conspiracy>> Assange goes off deep end (contains half the Private Eye story)
• John Kampfner>> Julian Assange and the Big Picture

In other Wikileaks news, and on a far more grave note, it’s alarming to learn that Bradley Manning has been charged with aiding the enemy, which his lawyer says carries with it the risk of the death penalty.

Phone hacking

• Media Guardian>>Phone-hacking libel claim contested by Metropolitan police
• Independent>> Sheridan’s lawyer claims phone may have been hacked

FoI

• Index on Censorship>> Royalty free Freedom of Information
• FoI Man>> Are journalists paranoid about FoI?

Misc

• Journalism.co.uk>> European parliament delays vote on Hungary’s controversial media law
• Independent>> Stephen Glover: The witch hunt at the Telegraph will backfire (and see Private Eye here)
• A bit of fun to accompany new site http://churnalism.com: Tom Scott’s Journalism Warning Labels

Tips & tools

• Colin Meek & I have written an advanced guide to Twitter research

Events

Meeja Law is pleased to be supporting IBC’s upcoming Privacy & Defamation Conference on 15 March 2011:

From super-injunctions to secret recordings; from cost shifting to Clift; and from online infringements to official secrets: join some of the country’s top media lawyers to discuss the year’s most challenging topics at IBC Legal’s 18th annual Defamation & Privacy conference.

You can find a full stream of aggregated media law news via @medialawUK on Twitter; and Meeja Law tweets go out via @meejalaw. Contact me via @jtownend or jt.townend [at] gmail.com. Relevant journalism and law events here: https://meejalaw.com/events/

judge just gave me explicit permission to tweet proceedings “if it’s quiet and doesn’t disturb anything”. #wikileaks

[Update 1: For the record, this is not the first instance of a tweet from a UK court - see bottom of this post.*]

But normal rules prohibiting recording apply, according to journalist Heather Brooke, who wrote on Twitter:

Total fiasco at court today for assange #wikileaks hearing. No recording allowed or space for world’s press.

Mostrous also tweets that phones must be switched off unless used for note taking: ….Security guard: “phones off, unless you take notes with blackberry [paraphrased] in which case away you go”.

It’s a novel development. The Guardian asks in its live blog: “Has a judge ever allowed journalist to tweet court proceedings before?”

[Update 2: via Matthew Wells on Twitter, this piece by Siobhain Butterworth in July 2010 explains that "there isn't a statutory ban on creating text by means of electronic devices".] Laura Oliver discussed the topic on Journalism.co.uk in 2008.

For readers interested in the legal aspects of Wikileaks, a new account, not associated with Wikileaks’ official lawyers, is tracking events: @WLLegal.

*Update 3: Is the Times the first paper to be granted permission to tweet from the courtroom in the UK? Difficult to ascertain, I should think.

Ben Kendall (@benjkendall) crime reporter for the Eastern Daily Press in Norfolk has certainly tweeted from court before, albeit without additional permission from the judge. Via today’s tweets we learn that he used Twitter in court earlier this year.

“As I understand it there’s no law prevented [sic] electronic communications being sent from court,” he said.  He told Journalism.co.uk’s Laura Oliver that he …. “went ahead and did it and figured they’d pull me up on it if there was a problem… have a good relationship with court.”

Kendall also comments:

How can anyone prove they were the first? I doubt very much that nobody had done it before me – just nobody noticed before then.