Media law mop up: Mosley defeat; injunctions by tweet; and Wikileaks gag

The noise around super injunctions is getting louder, especially in tabloid quarters. But, as Alan Rusbridger said this week in his Anthony Sampson speech, the newspapers’ approach to the public interest is often inconsistent: “We sometimes send confusing signals about what we really care about.”

We’d been missing our normal PopBitch fix of late; it turned out the weekly email had been going to the spam folder. Had the injuncters got to Gmail too? Anyway, this week’s update is entitled: “Superinjunction revealed!” That, rather disappointingly, turns out to be the name of PopBitch’s racehorse. The celebrity gossip newsletter also commented, somewhat cynically:

Could it be true that the tabloids are not entirely unhappy with the latest wave of injunctions? We’re told that the red-tops are busy dusting off their weakest celeb kiss ‘n’ tells in the hope that the celebs in question take out a gagging order. It would make sense. An outraged “Another famous married man tries to silence us” piece is way more powerful at the moment than a story on the banal sexual shenanigans of some footballer you’ve probably never heard of.

Most bizarre story placing of the week should go to Metro, which deemed an article about TwitPic changing its copyright rules worthy of the front page slot… Twitter, or copyright small print, really isn’t that interesting.

And bad legal tip of the week goes to the Independent’s media diary:  ‘Mosley tipped for court victory’.

Now, on with the rest of the UK media law news from the last seven days…

Contempt of court

Super injunctions (definitions and chronology here)

Privacy

Mosley decision in Europe

Wikileaks

Defamation

Press standards

Data protection

Press freedom

Readers of last week’s round up will be glad to know the Mirror story about Gabby Logan not having a super injunction is now correctly illustrated with a picture of her, and not a local election hopeful.

Finally, a little Royal hypocrisy for you at the Ministry of Truth.

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 . Relevant journalism and law events here: https://meejalaw.com/events/.

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One Response to Media law mop up: Mosley defeat; injunctions by tweet; and Wikileaks gag

  1. Pingback: Law and Media Round Up – 16 May 2011 « Inforrm's Blog

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