Times held in contempt for interviewing jurors
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009The Times of London has been convicted of contempt for quoting the foreman of a jury criticising the result of a baby death case. (It was a 10-2 majority verdict; he was in the minority). His point: the jury was overwhelmed by expert evidence, which at the end of the day could only be speculative. He said: […]
Campbell in the soup?
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009You’ve probably heard that the police have asked the judge in the Waiouru Army medals case to order John Campbell and Ingrid Leary to answer questions that may disclose the identity of their source. (That source being, of course, one of the thieves, with whom Campbell famously performed his Clayton’s interview.) The journalists have promised not […]
Time to turn the lights on in Parliament
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009The MPs’ expenses scandal rages on in Britain. MPs have expenses, you understand. Quite rightly, they can recover those that are “wholly, exclusively and necessarily incurred for the performance of a Member’s parliamentary duties.” And what MP could effectively and conscientiously perform his or her duties without spending 2000 pounds to replace a leaking pipe […]
Normal service resumes
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009I’ve been off on holiday and doing some marking and some barristering. Meanwhile, media law issues have been piling up. I’ll tackle some over the next few days.
Prostating himself
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009Veteran journo and journalism teacher Jim Tucker has a blog about his experiences battling prostate cancer. It’s in a good cause: encouraging blokes to get their doctors to poke them up the bum from time to time to check for cancer. It’s an interesting and worthy use of a blog (he’s got a more conventional […]
Disappointing commentary
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009When a batsman gets out, I think most of us can figure out how he’s feeling. Do we really need to be told, almost every single time, “he’ll be disappointed with that”? Oh, and when did “average” and “ordinary” become synonyms for “awful”?
“Stop the romp”
Friday, April 3rd, 2009The beautiful and talented Claudia Geiringer debuts in the blogosphere with a plea to the Nats to take seriously their own Attorney-General’s legal advice about Bill of Rights problems with their legislation – and not railroad their dodgy bills through Parliament without allowing a decent chance to debate them. [Update: Dean Knight weighs in here, […]
Bain call
Wednesday, March 25th, 2009Can’t say I understand why Justice Pankhurst refused to allow the media to broadcast David Bain’s telephone call from the day of all the killings. We could hear reporters describing what he said. The jurors can’t be prejudiced by a repetition of evidence they’ve already heard. I can accept that there are problems allowing live streaming […]
Googling jurors again
Wednesday, March 25th, 2009A Florida drugs trial had to be abandoned this month because no fewer than nine of the jurors had been conducting their own research online, despite a warning from the judge not to. In NZ Judge David Harvey has been warning about this for ages. Is anyone listening? It’s becoming clear that we can’t rely […]
NYT enforces copyright over bloggers
Friday, March 20th, 2009I’ve noted before that lots of bloggers routinely flout copyright. One of the ways they do so is by lifting photos from others’ websites. This will rarely be protected by a defence of fair dealing. The US “fair use” defence is wider, but not that much wider. The New York Times has apparently gotten fed […]
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