Media law and ethics » super injunctions

Gideon Benaim: Payments for private information and the regulation of journalism

jtownend — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 08:59:41 +0000

Gideon Benaim, partner at Michael Simkins LLP (formerly of Schillings), has responded to my question about the potential regulation of payments for private information, in a blog post for Inforrm. He argues that “unless there is a legitimate public interest then private information should only be disclosed with the consent of everyone involved“:

This is, I think, something which a new regulatory code should spell out. Payment for stories should only be made when there is no alternative and the public interest requires it. Is this really an unfair proposal? Of course not, and it is in fact the law, despite it being largely ignored by the tabloids.

Full post at this link…

He previously responded to questions about the reporting/tracking of privacy injunctions here.

Reporting privacy injunctions: a response from Gideon Benaim

jtownend — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 08:09:59 +0000

I recently asked a couple of questions about reporting anonymised privacy injunctions, following a piece by Gideon Benaim in the Guardian. Benaim, a partner at Michael Simkins LLP, has responded with a full blog post response, which is published on Inforrm here. He argues:

It isn’t necessary to publish information about specific cases contemporaneously, nor to publish to the world at large at any time the “not so basic” details of a specific case, in the way that the courts have started to do. The Practice Direction can be amended to oblige practitioners to provide the required basic information to a central office in the High Court. Transparency is possible through statistics without needing to draw attention to individuals at the time they obtain the injunction.

I’ve left a comment below the piece, asking whether the open justice principle in fact requires the publication of basic detail about contemporaneous privacy judgments, which mimics a question put by Edward Thompson in the Journal of Media Law last December, in relation to cameras in court. I am not attempting to provide an answer at this stage, but am interested in hearing what other people think.

How should privacy injunctions be reported?

jtownend — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 15:16:00 +0000

The recommended procedure and law around privacy injunctions “isn’t quite fit for purpose” according to Gideon Benaim, a partner at Michael Simkins LLP (formerly of Schillings), writing in the Guardian today. Comments seem to be closed on the piece so I’m responding with a couple of questions/points in this post.

In his view, Lord Neuberger’s 2011 report on ‘super-injunctions’, while “well-intentioned”, “legitimises the fuelling of publicity which in turn creates irreversible intrusion and mischief”.

“For allowing the publication of the fact that an injunction has been granted, together with basic facts about the specific case (facts which often go well beyond what can really be described as basic) creates publicity and hysteria about who the person seeking the injunction is, and also encourages online speculation fuelled by those in the know (probably started by mischievous journalists). Not to mention that all of these things actually increase the costs massively.”

Benaim suggests … “restricting publication of the fact of an injunction where a court has found there to be no, or insufficient, public interest to justify intrusion into a private life”, which he considers “a pretty reasonable prospect”.

This proposition raises important questions around open justice and transparency. When Lord Neuberger’s committee report came out in May 2011, I argued that it cut through the “super injunction hysteria” and its recommendations would provide a balanced way of monitoring the number and type of injunctions being granted, without transgressing an individual’s legitimate claim to Article 8 rights, as decided by a judge.

I don’t think it was a satisfactory state of affairs that, at the press conference announcing the report’s release, Lord Neuberger was unable to tell journalists precisely how many so-called super injunctions and anonymised privacy injunctions had been granted since 2000. According to the report, specific records were not “kept in respect of such matters”. The committee’s recommendations sought to prevent that type of data blackout occurring again.

As quoted above, Benaim is concerned that publishing facts about the specific case “creates publicity and hysteria about who the person seeking the injunction is”… “and also encourages online speculation…”

My question, then, is how he proposes to track injunctions, if at all? How does he propose that data is collected around the number and type of injunctions granted? Who should have access to the records?

If we were to lose our newfound access to regular statistics and published anonymised judgments and return to the unmonitored secrecy of yore, how would we prevent a repeat of events that led up to the committee’s creation in April 2010? According to the Judiciary, it was formed as a response to “growing public concerns about the use and effect of what were termed super-injunctions and the impact they were having on open justice”. Would we not be back at square one?

Benaim is right that there has been some tabloid manoeuvring on this issue and fuelling of the fire (and in other quarters too), but the report indicated a wider public concern about open justice, which needed to be addressed.

Payments for private information

Finally, there is one really interesting point he makes, which seems worth flagging up:

“Also, isn’t there something particularly wrong and distasteful about kiss-and-tells and similar types of arrangement with the tabloids? By this I mean the payment of money to someone (usually an unknown) for a story about something private which is only of interest to the tabloid because it relates to a well-known person. This, I argue, should rarely, unless there is a particularly strong and legitimate public interest argument, be afforded much weight by the courts.”

It strikes me that is one issue that needs further attention: how should financial transactions of private information be managed in a new system of regulation? If such transactions were subject to regulation, what implication would there be for the public interest, freedom of expression and an individual’s right to privacy?

Analysis: Privacy cases re-visited, a year on from Super Injunction Spring - Judith Townend

jtownend — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 07:08:49 +0000

Reblogged from Inforrm's Blog:

A year on from the introduction of the Master of the Rolls' Practice Guidance, six privacy injunctions have been discharged, but with the claimant's anonymity maintained in each case. The British media, however, hasn't had much to say.

Law and Media Round Up – 19 March 2012

jtownend — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 11:10:21 +0000

Reblogged from Inforrm's Blog:

It was the thirteenth week of evidence at the Leveson Inquiry. As Natalie Peck reported for Inforrm here, the Inquiry heard from former Times in-house lawyer, Alastair Brett, crime reporters and senior figures from the Metropolitan Police force, including head of press Dick Fedorcio.

Inforrm Law and Media Round Up – 5 December 2011

jtownend — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 17:35:48 +0000

My round up of the past week in media law for the Inforrm blog can be found at this link. Today’s top media law reads (since I compiled that) include: David Allen Green on the “story of what happens what an entire system fails”; Catherine Bennett on historian Niall Ferguson’s objections to an LRB review; and The Lawyer reporting Sweet & Maxwell’s stats on privacy injunctions (I’ll try and get hold of the original report).

Media law mop up: Parliamentary satire; super injunction data; Morgan and Mills

jtownend — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 13:27:28 +0000

It may be August, but there’s still lots of serious media law news to digest. And also some sillier stuff. Like English parliamentary rules. A send-up by the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart was banned from broadcast in the UK because it uses Parliamentary footage for satirical purposes. He responds here (where you can also watch the clip). Channel 4 explained on Twitter:

We are prevented by parliamentary rules from broadcasting parliamentary proceedings in a comedic or satrical context.

More on the rules for televising Parliament here (HT: Helen Lewis-Hasteley and @fiatpanda).

Super injunctions, remember them? Well, the Guardian has put together some useful data on them here, for download by all. Sources include Inforrm, which has its own table here, Bailii and the excellent RPC Privacy Blog. Lord Neuberger, meanwhile, has issued new practice guidance for interim non-disclosure injunctions and announced an injunction data collection pilot. More on that next week.

Phone hacking

Privacy injunctions

Media ethics

Media regulation

Libel

Contempt of Court

Internet regulation

Press freedom

David Bartlett>> Liverpool council leader Joe Anderson demands block on Dale Street Blues be lifted – Liverpool Daily Post

Court reporting

RPC Privacy>> Reporting the family courts – new guide published

Law blogging

Jobs

Got a question?

In the autumn, Meeja Law plans to run a series of ‘Media law surgery’ posts and will put online writers’ legal questions to various experts. If you’’ve got a question, please leave it in the comments here, or drop a line tojt.townend@gmail.com.

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Media law mop up: Facebook contempt; Giggs' phone hacking claim; Broccoli wins libel payout

jtownend — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 09:02:50 +0000

A juror has become the first person in Britain to be convicted for contempt of court involving the internet, reportedly widely in the press. Meanwhile plenty of libel-related news: a payout for Bond producer Barbara Broccoli, a row between the Argus in Brighton and the local council, and Bahrain complains about coverage in the Independent.

Contempt

Libel

Media regulation

Phone hacking

Privacy injunctions

Copyright

Out-Law.com>>Company acting over use of newspaper snippets did not have right to sue, says US court

Reporting restrictions

HTFP>> Youths named after reporter’s court challenge

Freedom of expression

Want to contribute to Meeja Law?

Meeja Law would love to host guest articles by journalists / lawyers / students – or anyone with an interest in media law and ethics. If you’re interested please contact jt.townend@gmail.com.

You can find a full stream of aggregated media law news via @medialawUK on Twitter; and Meeja Law tweets go out via @meejalaw.

Please contact me via @jtownend or jt.townend [at] gmail.com with ideas, tips and event notifications. Relevant journalism and law events here: https://meejalaw.com/events/.

Are we sleepwalking into a privacy law?

jtownend — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 09:56:03 +0000

No, says John Cooper QC from 25 Bedford Row: “it’s simply a development of the law”. Judges, he said at this morning’s Weber Shandwick debate at Gray’s Inn, are interpreting existing law: Articles 8 and 10 and Section 12 of the Human Rights Act 1998. If we have been sleepwalking, it’s been for a “very very long time”, he added.

He was joined on the panel (chaired by Jon McLeod, UK chairman corporate & public affairs, Weber Shandwick) by Graham Atkins, Atkins Thomson; Jo Glanville, editor, Index on Censorship and Joshua Rozenberg, journalist and legal commentator.

The panellists covered a number of other areas including libel reform, contempt, CFAs, phone hacking and media accuracy. My question concerned the public interest: how did the panel interpret the public mood on privacy and injunctions? (Even if the public interest isn’t necessarily defined by what the public is interested in, I think we should know what the public does think about privacy rights and what is in the public interest). Joshua Rozenberg agreed that research in this area needs to be done.

It’s an issue I wrote about yesterday over on the Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism Blog following the methodologically disappointing ComRes poll for the Independent. Meanwhile, Inforrm has published my piece about publicity issues in the Court of Protection and family courts, which also fits into the super injunction debate. It features Lucy Series, legal researcher, and Lucy Reed, barrister, who raise some very interesting points about the role of the press when reporting CoP / family cases.

Media law mop up: Counting super injunctions; Twitter battles; and libel in the schoolyard

jtownend — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 13:59:20 +0000

So, just how many super injunctions and anonymous privacy injunctions are there? Even the Master of the Rolls doesn’t know, but various newspapers have had a stab at guessing. I’ve produced a table for the Inforrm blog which gives dates, issues, judges and links for privacy injunctions 2010-11. More background info about that here.

Here’s a link-laden round up of this week’s news:

Super / privacy injunctions

Privacy issues

Twitter disclosure

Libel

Contempt of court

Court reporting

Press Gazette>>Court of Protection reporting breakthrough

Data protection

Copyright

Press regulation

Journalism.co.uk>>Complaint against i newspaper for ‘misleading’ claim of no celebrity gossip upheld

Want to contribute to Meeja Law?

Meeja Law would love to host guest articles by journalists / lawyers / students – or anyone with an interest in media law and ethics. If you’re interested please contact jt.townend@gmail.com.

You can find a full stream of aggregated media law news via @medialawUK on Twitter; and Meeja Law tweets go out via @meejalaw.

Please contact me via @jtownend or jt.townend [at] gmail.com with ideas, tips and event notifications. Relevant journalism and law events here: https://meejalaw.com/events/.