Historical context

This event hosted by the City Media Network, as part of the Sociology Department PhD students seminar series, will take place on Tuesday 3 July:

Historicising the UK phone hacking scandal: the origins of wiretapping and early cases in the United States and Britain with Colin Agur (Columbia University, Graduate School of Journalism)

The ongoing revelations of widespread phone hacking by NewsCorp raise questions about journalistic ethics and how effectively governments can protect privacy in a world of mass mobile phone usage. To understand the significance of the current scandal, we can look to the origins of wiretapping: the relationship between the telephone and recording technology dates back to their nearly simultaneous releases in the 1870s. Since then, as technologies have improved, wiretapping has became a favored tool in police investigations on both sides of the Atlantic, and the subject for several scandals. This talk explores the roles different parties (bootleggers, bookies, police, journalists) have played in the growth and sophistication of telephone surveillance. It contextualises the current UK scandal, showing how a tactic developed by and for police has been put to use by powerful corporate actors.

Please contact belairgagnon.v(at)gmail.com for general inquiries. Full details.

Trial by media

Secondly, a new book chapter, by one of the CLJJ’s directors, Chris Greer, and former director Eugene McLaughlin:  ‘Trial by Media: Phone-hacking, Riots, Looting, Gangs and Police Chiefs’.

Abstract: Contemporary police chiefs must operate within an information-communications environment that differs radically from the more stable and predictable conditions conceptualised in previous research. The most important dimension of this multi-faceted environment is the emergence of the 24-7 news mediasphere. This paper examines the changing nature of news media-police chief relations, and the rising news media ‘politics of outrage’, by analysing the ‘trial by media’ that defined Sir Hugh Orde’s attempt to become Commissioner of the MPS in August/September 2011.

Cite as: Greer, C. and McLaughlin, E. (2012) ‘Trial by Media: Phone-hacking, Riots, Looting, Gangs and Police Chiefs’, in J. Peay and T. Newburn (eds.) Policing, Politics, Culture and Control: Essays in Honour of Robert Reiner (Festschrift), London: Hart.

This paper was presented to the Crime, Justice and Society Research Group at City Law School on 30 May 2012.

Reblogged from Law, Justice and Journalism:

By PA Media Lawyer

The press needs to lift its game if the principle of open justice is to be maintained, a senior QC has warned.

Part of the rationale for open justice was that it meant that judges were themselves under trial while conducting cases, because of media and public scrutiny, and that the public was educated by reports of what was happening in the courts, said media law and human rights specialist Geoffrey Robertson.

Read more… 136 more words

Reblogged from Law, Justice and Journalism:

By PA Media Lawyer

The jury system might need to be changed to allow jurors to play a more active part in trials as a result of the advances in technology which brought the internet, micro-blogging and social websites such as Twitter and Facebook, a conference was told.

At present technological advances posed two dangers to trials in criminal cases, said Professor Ian Cram, Professor of Comparative Constitutional Law at the University of Leeds (left).

Read more… 120 more words

In March 2011, the Daily Mail and Sun were found guilty of contempt of court for publishing online photographs of a defendant posing with a gun at the start of a murder trial.

It was, the Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, outlined in a speech at City University London last week, “the first time” the High Court “had been asked to consider whether an online publication was a contempt of court”.

I find it astonishing it took over 12 years after the birth of Google for such a case to be brought.

There are likely to be far more breaches, either by mainstream media publications pushing legal boundaries or by thoughtless social media users, than cases brought.

It is this latter category that interests me: how is the public educated about contempt of court? After all, as I’ve argued on this blog before, we’re all publishers now.

Jurors receive special instruction, as they did in the murder trial described above, but information outside the courtroom is disseminated rather randomly.

It relies on mainstream media reporting the details of contempt of court cases. Thanks to national media interest in this recent case, more people now know not to upload a film of yourself dancing on the chairs in the court lobby.

I raised the point about lack of legal education on Twitter, and someone immediately replied:

“The same problem applies to any area of law and the wider public (eg, copyright). Ignorance of the law cannot be used as excuse!”

It’s a fair point that anyone can google for a definition of contempt, but I suspect many breaches – not necessarily publicised through prosecution – are committed by people who don’t know that they need to look up the law before writing a contemptuous update on Facebook or Twitter.

Blog and online news comment moderators are likely to have encountered widespread ignorance of contempt.  A recent survey conducted by YouGov for Nominet attempted to quiz the public on their online legal knowledge with questions addressing injunctions and active proceedings, but I’m not convinced we can deduce too much from its findings about ‘accidental outlaws’ as I’ve explained here. Further surveying in this area would be a useful exercise.

Various breaches of contempt of court online have been highlighted by the courts: in November contempt charges against a individual tweeting during the Vincent Tabak trial were dropped, while juror Joanne Fraill became the first person to be prosecuted for contempt of court for using the internet during a trial last June.

In regards to the latter case, Grieve said:

The case highlighted important principles and again that the internet does not provide some form of immunity from prosecution.

Grieve’s speech and the responses in the Q&A afterwards repeatedly emphasised that “bloggers are not immune from the law” and are as much subject to law of land as professional media publishers.

It would be helpful, then, for the Attorney General to consider how the public might be better informed about contempt. One Guardian commenter argues underneath David Banks’ excellent article about online contempt last month that the education system could make better provisions, for example.

You can read Grieve’s full speech here. The legal blogger Carl Gardner has provided an extremely useful annotated version here, indicating the Attorney General’s deviation from script.

Live blog at this link.