Bouquets
Monday, March 16th, 2009Mediawatch this weekend was terrific. I think it’s absolutely at it’s best when it’s exposing serious media lapses. The two that Mediawatch highlighted this week illustrate what I think are two of the most common ethical failings: leaving things out because the story is sexier without it (as in the case of the surf rescue […]
Sign up for Media Law conference
Friday, March 13th, 2009Lexis Nexus is running its annual media law conference in Auckland on 17 April 2009. I’ll be chairing it. It covers many of the hot issues in media law, including suppression, contempt, defamation, privacy, and from a range of angles – people involved in the litigation itself, academics analysing the end results, and journalists trying to […]
Geddis on Crow
Friday, March 13th, 2009My mate Andrew Geddis has been sparring with me a bit in the comments section on this blog, and is always good value. In this thoughtful post at Pundit, Andrew rightly takes on the Auckland City Council for trying to do an end-run around the NZ Bill of Rights Act in its attempt to squelch […]
Sentences for sale
Thursday, March 12th, 2009Private prisons in the US have bribed judges to lock up more offenders so they can receive more money for incarcerating them. Only in the US? Or should it be part of the debate here about privatising prisons? [Update: I see TV One News did raise this point in a report last night.]
OK! magazine fakes front cover photo
Thursday, March 12th, 2009More grist for those worried about digital manipulation. OK! has a front page photo of Cheryl Cole with her arm around Victoria Beckham (click on the magnifying glass at bottom right for the whole photo) to illustrate its story about the two making up. But it’s a montage. They weren’t even at the same event. […]
ECHR upholds ongoing defamation liability for internet
Thursday, March 12th, 2009One of the rules of defamation law is that each separate publication of something that’s defamatory gives rise to separate liability. So each time someone downloads a defamatory article, there’s a fresh publication and a new potential lawsuit. You can see how this might give rise to some headaches for news archives. However, an attempt […]
New draft broadcasting code for TV
Monday, March 9th, 2009The BSA has released a new draft of the free-to-air TV code for public consultation. The proposed changes are conveniently set out alongside the existing provisions. The changes that leap out at me: 1. Balance is renamed “Controversial issues – viewpoints”. But the substance remains the same (it has to: it’s in the Broadcasting Act). […]
Law Commission paper on privacy
Monday, March 9th, 2009The Law Commission has released yet another paper on privacy. “These are big issues and they are hard,” says Commission president Sir Geoffrey Palmer. 300 pages big and hard, in fact, building on 2008’s 222-page paper “Privacy: concepts and issues” (discussed here), 2007’s 76-page “A conceptual approach to privacy” by Mark Hickford, and that’s not counting […]
Police search warrants against the media
Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009In light of the police’s impending execution of a search warrant on the offices of the Herald on Sunday over Holmes’s (apparently) recorded interview with Tony Veitch, I thought y’all might be interested in the Court of Appeal’s guidelines for the issue of such warrants (from TVNZ v Attorney-General [1995] 2 NZLR 641): One guideline, […]
Another Bain beat-up
Monday, March 2nd, 2009I think the SST overplayed its lead story on the Bain jury. The headline: David Bain murder retrial: Jurors must be tested for bias – expert The first two paras: A TOP law professor has called for tougher testing of jurors to minimise the risk of prejudice in the retrial of David Bain on five murder charges. […]
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