17 Jun 11 | Uncategorized
The Times devotes page 3 of its print edition today to the Panorama/Primark affair, leaving it rather late in the story (paragraph 11 of 13) to point out that the journalist involved has emphatically denied the faking charge and is considering legal action. The paper also has a sidebar listing three other BBC apologies since 2004, under the headline “Sorry state of affairs”. (more…)
15 Jun 11 | Uncategorized
The case of Joanne Fraill, who faces jail for breaching jury rules by contacting a defendant through Facebook, is a reminder of the seriousness of the challenge to the British justice system posed by the internet. There is more at stake here than Tweeting about the private lives of celebrities. (more…)
09 Jun 11 | Uncategorized
According to News International the latest allegations in the phone hacking affair, made by Nick Davies in the Guardian and Labour MP Tom Watson in the Commons are “wholly inaccurate”. For four years the company told us much the same thing about similar allegations relating to private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, and it was wrong — so wrong that it is now ready to pay out compensation running into millions, while a police investigation is under way involving 45 officers. On balance, I know who I am inclined to believe. (more…)
06 Jun 11 | Uncategorized
Now that the dust is settling after the injunctions affair, here are some things I learned:
1. Ryan Giggs never applied for, nor was he ever granted, a superinjunction.
2. There have been only two new superinjunctions in the past year — one lasted seven days and the other was overturned on appeal.
3. Newspapers which furiously inform their readers that injunctions are against the public interest are remarkably bad at making that case in court (where they have to present actual arguments).
4. The Fred Goodwin injunction never prevented regulators from investigating whether his alleged relationship breached bank rules, nor did it prevent anyone — including newspapers — from complaining to those regulators.
5. You don’t have to rely on the media for explanations of important court judgements; you can normally read them for yourself at a brilliant legal website called www.bailii.org. (Give it a try.)
6. There appear to be 75,000 British Twitter users who are ready, with the right tabloid encouragement, to participate in the “naming and shaming” (or pillorying) of adulterers.
7. When their commercial interest is threatened our tabloid papers forget their traditional enthusiasm for law and order and rail against judges and the legal system like serial lags in Wormwood Scrubs.
8. When it suits them, the tabloids also blithely set aside their usual view that online social networking is an evil invention that causes crime, suicide, binge drinking, obesity, terrorism and cancer.
9. When David Cameron is shouted at by the press he will feebly set up a committee, even when another committee reported on more or less the same thing only a week earlier. (He will also fail to declare an interest, which is that he is a close friend of the chief executive of Rupert Murdoch’s News International.)
10. For every time the law is an ass there is an occasion when the British tabloid press is a slavering pack of hyenas. But with the law you have a right of appeal.
Brian Cathcart teaches journalism at Kingston University London. Follow him on Twitter @BrianCathcart
