Media law and ethics » twitter

Opinion: Legal and ethical issues for televising and tweeting court - Judith Townend

jtownend — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 07:34:28 +0000

"In the back bedroom the duvet was half off the bed and neatly folded clothing on the bed, a bathrobe on the floor too #spy #spook", @JonClementsITV, crime correspondent, ITV News

Tweeting

We are long used to abridged sensitive or traumatic information in broadcast soundbites and scrolling news tickers, but court tweeting is still in its infancy as a medium, and can feel more intimate and immediate.

Open justice: forging the digital path ahead

jtownend — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:36:01 +0000

In a nice bit of serendipity, I discovered yesterday that the Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism’s ‘Justice Wide Open‘ event on 29 February will fall in ‘Open Justice Week’, a new initiative led by James Doleman, of the Tommy Sheridan trial blog, and the Scottish Press Club and Glasgow court reporter Cristiana Theodoli.

Their ‘Open Justice UK‘ project, which will go live on Monday 27 February, aims “to get writers, legal professionals and members of the public to collaborate using social media to share their experiences of a week in the life of the legal system”.

Our goal is to publish accounts from all levels of justice, from the lowest courts to the highest, inviting lawyers, journalists, members of the public and offenders to write, blog and tweet about what really goes on in our courts.

Guardian Law supported the project in an editorial yesterday,

The project is not without difficulties. Participants need training in how to avoid contempt of court, which some lawyers have offered to provide. Some Scottish courts lack a phone signal, let alone decent Wi-Fi. Judges may have reservations. Professional court reporters know that their job demands skill and care. But peering into the workings of the justice system is a necessary task, and we wish the project every success.

Open Justice UK is on Twitter @oj_UK and has a Facebook group here. It strikes me as a really useful exercise and I look forward to participating/following.

As the Guardian says, there will be difficulties ahead for the digital court reporter. While excited about the future for ‘digital open justice’, I’m also keenly aware of the ethical and legal dilemmas it brings.

For example, is it always appropriate to allow live-tweeting in court? If so, should more guidance and resources be made available to both journalists and the general public? I shared the discomfort of some tweeters about live tweets from the Gary Speed inquest and reflected on whether they met the PCC’s criteria for reporting inquests. The tweets I saw did not seem to divulge any more detail than the subsequent press reports but nonetheless, I felt myself agreeing with the Mirror’s Jim Shelley who said: “Who amongst us really needs ‘live updates’ from #garyspeedinquest?”

From a legal perspective, contempt of court poses the biggest challenge: last week tweeting was banned in the Harry Redknapp trial at Southwark Crown Court, after a journalist tweeted the name of a juror and about evidence given by a witness under oath in the absence of the jury – the matter has now been referred to the Attorney General, according to Legal Week.

‘Open Justice Week’ could provide a good platform to discuss these and other issues, as well as an opportunity to come up with new ideas and strategies for the development of digital open justice.

Our coincidentally but aptly timed Justice Wide Open event at City University is now fully booked, but you can join the waiting list here.

It will feature a specific session on court reporting (with Heather Brooke, journalist and activist; Mr Mike Dodd, editor of PA Media Lawyer; Adam Wagner, barrister, One Crown Office Row and editor of the UK Human Rights Blog, William Perrin, founder, Talk About Local and member of the Crime and Justice Sector Panel on Transparency). We’ll be tweeting and blogging the event, as well as publishing the papers later in the spring.

As a postscript, the Cabinet Office has released submissions to its Open Data Consultation here. I haven’t had a chance to go through them yet, but they include responses from the Ministry of Justice, the Information Commissioner’s Office, the Campaign for Freedom of Information, Creative Commons and the Open Rights Group – (and a submission by Lucy Series and me on legal data).

Leveson Inquiry – follow the tweets live

jtownend — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 09:37:47 +0000

And so begins day one of the formal Leveson Inquiry, in Court 73 at the Royal Courts of Justice. Proceedings will be streamed live from 10:30am today on the relaunched Leveson Inquiry website. The public can attend hearings although seating is limited. Journalists will be allowed to tweet from the hearing room – I am waiting to confirm if this also applies to members of the public. [Update - members of the public will also be able to tweet from an overflow room, in which the live broadcast will be screened].

This CoverItLive blog picks up the tweets from the #Leveson and #LevesonInquiry hashtags, as well as the @indexleveson account. If you know of any other dedicated accounts I should add please let me know.

Read & comment on the blog here.

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/.

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

jtownend — Thu, 12 May 2011 21:19:57 +0000

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

Out-Law.com>>ICO publishes new code of practice for personal data sharing

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 jt.townend [at] gmail.com. Relevant journalism and law events here: https://meejalaw.com/events/.

Midweek media law mop up: Twitter in court consultation; PCC's Twitter ruling; Twitter in Supreme Court (bored yet?)

jtownend — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 18:47:16 +0000

On Meeja Law this week: the PCC’s first ruling on newspapers’ republication of tweets; the Lord Chief Justice’s consultation on Twitter in court; and a City Law school blog carnival.

Also, the Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism Twitter account (@citycljj), Facebook page and blog is up and running. More content on those sites soon…

Here’s a run-down of some of the major media law and ethics stories this week, so far (with a focus on the UK).

Court reporting

Freedom of Information

Inforrm>>Revisited and Revised: Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Information (Three parts) – Hugh Tomlinson QC. Part One / Part Two / Part Three

Libel

International libel

Index on Censorship>>Venezuelan journalist prosecuted for criminal libel

Contempt of Court

Press Gazette>>Pre-charge anonymity bill dropped

Phone hacking

Self-regulation

Miscellaneous

Guardian>> INM threatens to sue Irish Mail on Sunday over spoof cover

Murphy / Sky

The City Law School Research blog carnival on the pub landlady’s legal battle over broadcasting rights:

Tips & research tools

Try Yahoo alerts to create an email newsletter from any webpage with an RSS feed.

Discussion

Over on LinkedIn, we’ve been considering the future of a UK legal support network for online publishers. Interested? Drop me a line, or/and join the group.

Know about a media law/ethics event? Let me know and I’ll put it in the round up and on a soon-to-be-written events page (admittedly, I’ve said that for a few weeks now). 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.

First PCC ruling on Tweet republication: complaint not upheld

jtownend — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 12:40:30 +0000

The PCC has not upheld a civil servant’s complaints about the republication of her Tweets by the Daily Mail and the Independent on Sunday.

In the first ruling of its kind, the PCC “concluded that the newspapers’ actions did not constitute “an unjustifiable intrusion” into the complainant’s privacy.”

Ms Sarah Baskerville complained to the Press Complaints Commission that an article headlined “Oh please, stop this twit from Tweeting, someone”, published in the Daily Mail on 13 November 2010, intruded into her privacy in breach of Clause 3 Privacy and was misleading in breach of Clause 1 Accuracy of the Editors’ Code of Practice. The complaint was not upheld.

…. Additional complaints against both newspapers about alleged breaches of Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Code were also rejected.

“This is an important ruling by the Commission,” said Stephen Abell, PCC director.

“As more and more people make use of such social media to publish material related to their lives, the Commission is increasingly being asked to make judgements about what can legitimately be described as private information. In this case, the Commission decided that republication of material by national newspapers, even though it was originally intended for a smaller audience, did not constitute a privacy intrusion.”

Full Daily Mail ruling at this link…

Full Independent on Sunday ruling at this link…

Consultation on 'live text based communications' from court

jtownend — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 16:27:37 +0000

Via the Guardian comes news that the Lord Chief Justice has launched a consultation on live reporting from court, following interim guidance issued in December 2010.

Submissions will be taken from February 7 to May 4 2011. It’s good to see them acknowledge the problem of defining the media – it’s about time this issue was properly addressed. Maybe this will put it on the agenda for future Contempt of Court discussions.

[I previously reported on Tweeting from court here]

It says:

“The central issue to be considered by this consultation, therefore, is how the courts should take account of these technological and cultural developments in reporting, in a way which protects freedom of speech, the right to a fair trial and maintains the statutory requirement that reports of legal proceedings must be fair, accurate and in good faith.”

Key questions:

1. Is there a legitimate demand for live, text based communications to be used from
the courtroom?

2. Under what circumstances should live, text based communications be permitted from the courtroom?

3. Are there any other risks which derive from the use of live, text based
communications from court?

4. How should the courts approach with the different risks to proceedings posed by
different platforms for live, text based communications from court?

5. How should permitting the use of live, text based communications from court be
reconciled with the prohibition against the use of mobile telephones in court?

6. Should the use of live, text based communications from court be principally for the use of the media? How should the media be defined? Should persons other than the accredited media be permitted to engage in live, text based communications from court?

Consultation doc embedded below:

View this document on Scribd

Correcting the error on Twitter: how NPR's mistake about Arizona shooting quickly spread

jtownend — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 11:16:56 +0000

Thoughtless tweeting can’t be blamed for this error: it appears to have started with a mainstream news organisation. Representative Gabrielle Giffords did not die as initially reported by NPR News and others and is in hospital following Saturday’s shooting in Arizona, which left six dead and many injured.

As documented by Craig Silverman on Regret the Error, a number of media outlets, including Reuters and the BBC, re-tweeted the false report that the congresswoman had been killed. NPR has since published an explanation of the error here.

It raises the question of correcting the error effectively and quickly in the digital age, a point discussed in some of the pieces linked by Silverman here. Steve Safran on Lost Remote discusses how Twitter exacerbated the error, even following NPR’s correction update:

For hours after it was reported she was alive, people kept discovering the original tweet that she was dead, retweeting it to their friends without seeing the update. In several cases, the retweet of the incorrect report came three or more hours after the report first spread (…)

So, Safran asks:

So we ask: is deleting a tweet after the fact a lack of transparency, especially if any subsequent tweets don’t admit the error? Is a news organization obliged to tweet that it was wrong? Does the retweet function make such actions moot? We strongly believe in transparency, as do many of you. But whether deleting tweets is a responsibility or not, and whether a news organization must tweet that it was wrong, should lead to serious discussions in all newsrooms.

On Twitter, the discussion continues. Dan Biddle (@article_dan) suggests that a “disable RT-ability action wld b great”. Sue Llewellyn (@suellewellyn) is worried that “incorrect tweets often get RT’d hours later” and suggests that “perhaps @twitter can create a correction button?”

As news organisations increasingly use Twitter to break news, the correction issue is something they’re going to have to consider extremely carefully. Please leave thoughts and comments below.

Twilence in court! Judge allows reporters to tweet during Assange hearing

jtownend — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 15:19:22 +0000

Forgive the poor headline, but worth flagging up that according to Times media reporter Alexi Mostrous, the judge has given him permission to tweet from Westminster magistrates court during Wikileaks editor Julian Assange’s appeal for bail. Mostrous writes on Twitter:

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.