02 Nov 09 | Index Index, minipost, News and features
Grenadian high court Judge Claire Henry ordered the liquidation, on 22 October, of the “Grenada Today” newspaper after the owners failed to reach an agreement with former Prime Minister Keith Mitchell over the settlement of an EC$191,000 (US$71,135) libel award.
The paper’s editor, George Worme, a veteran journalist, and Mitchell have been at loggerheads for years as the newspaper sought to expose what it termed corrupt activities of the Mitchell administration during its 13 years in office.
Read more here
21 Oct 09 | United Kingdom
Index on Censorship and English PEN today welcomed MPs’ robust response in this afternoon’s adjournment debate to law firm Carter-Ruck’s challenge to Parliamentary reporting, and called on them to strengthen the public’s right to information by banning the use of so-called “super injunctions” except in extreme circumstances.
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19 Oct 09 | Comment, News and features
Law firm Carter-Ruck’s super-injunction to attempt to stop the reporting of a question on the Trafigura affair in Parliament has galvanised MPs and other bodies to take up the fight for freedom of expression. John Kampfner reports
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16 Oct 09 | Uncategorized
Friend of Index Allen Green has a great piece on libel reform over at CiF:
“The effect of libel chill is that the public do not have access to information that would properly inform their decision-making on important topics, such as public health and safety, or about the conduct of powerful corporations.
Accordingly, it is not journalists and publishers that require protection from libel law, but the public. We need a general public interest defence that can be balanced against the private right to reputation. This could be done legally by making the public interest a ground for invoking qualified privilege, which means malice or bad faith would have to be alleged to commence a claim where the public interest is plausibly engaged. Coupled with a statutory right to correction or reply for the claimant, this reform would provide appropriate protection to both claimants and defendants.”
Read the rest here
Index on Censorship and English PEN will soon be launching out joint report into libel reform. Watch this space.
