I’m trialling a Monday media law round-up. Please let me know what you think and if it’s useful. Keeping it simple for now…
A lot to mop up on this bank holiday morning following the Xmas/NY break. The hot ML news issue is Contempt of Court, as newspapers and tweeters push the boundaries with reports and commentary on the Joanna Yeates murder case (I suspect many of the people I follow on Twitter aren’t typical because they were all worrying about the CoC issues and warning their followers to take care). The pieces to read:
- Media Guardian>>Yeates murder: Attorney General warns press to beware of contempt http://bit.ly/hKEehy
- Media Guardian>>Joanna Yeates murder case puts media coverage in the spotlight http://bit.ly/h5Nuak
- David Banks>>Molecular chemistry, contempt of court and the reporting of the Joanna Yeates case http://bit.ly/ffjRtL
- Inforrm>>Media Responsibility and Chris Jeffries http://bit.ly/dGwb7q
- Enemies of Reason>> Chris Jeffries and trial by media http://bit.ly/ftNSFF
Libel
- Jack of Kent, aka David Allen Green, has launched a defamation series on his blog. The first post looks at the purpose of defamation law.
- The Clift v Slough Borough Council case discussed in Heather Brooke’s book, The Silent State, featured on the 5RB site, following a judgment in the Court of Appeal in favour of the claimant, released on 21st December. 5RB reported: “In a significant decision for all public authorities, it was held that a public authority should only be entitled to rely on the defence of qualified privilege in respect of a defamatory publication if it the publication was consistent with its public law duties.” Further commentary by lawyer Francis Davey on Nearly Legal at this link.
Meanwhile the Wikileaks and phone hacking stories rumble on. Follow @WLLegal, for links to articles about the legal aspects of Wikileaks. Roy Greenslade reports on former NOTWer Paul McMullan’s chance encounter with Hugh Grant. Apparently the pair discussed the ethics of phone hacking, when the former tabloid hack gave the actor a lift after his car broke down on the A256 in Kent.
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
This is really useful! I think there would be a lot of journalism students (me being one) who would benefit from one of these posts every week.
thanks! you can sign up for email updates here: http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=MediaLawEthics&loc=en_US or the RSS feed can be found here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MediaLawEthics.
Please let me know if there are any particular issues you’d like covered.
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