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 […]
Should agencies be punished for breaching the OIA?
Friday, March 20th, 2009Stephen Franks makes an interesting comment in response to my post below, where I argued that the Department of Corrections breached the Official Information Act. Should agencies be punished for wilful breaches? (There are no sanctions for breach of the OIA, except criticism from the Ombudsmen). Are we becoming increasingly disdainful of laws that can’t […]
OIA and the Department of Corrections
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009You might have seen me on One News last Friday, commenting on the Department of Corrections’ response to TVNZ’s Official Information Act request. I was pretty critical of the department, who had provided minimal information. Either they genuinely didn’t know the answers, which was mind-boggling, I said, or they were lying about it. TVNZ used […]
Media harassment
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009UK popster Lily Allen has obtained an order against paparazzi under the UK’s Protection from Harassment Act. Our Harassment Act contains similar provisions for anti-harassment orders. I’m not aware of any being used against the media here yet, but harassment is widely defined, and journalists or photographers who persistently hound people (including by accosting them […]
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