How to shut down speech on the internet. Maybe.
Thursday, September 4th, 2008Sebastian Hoegl, a masters student from Germany in my media law seminar, made a startling suggestion this week. Since we all access the internet via an ISP (we put in a web address, the ISP hives off, collects the data, and sends it to our computers), then the ISPs are publishing that material to us. […]
Talk about giving with one hand…
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008On the same day the Hawke’s Bay Today was writing to Peter Hausmann to offer to correct its editorial of five days earlier for inaccurately founded attacks, guess what it printed in its paper? The same inaccurately founded attacks. Nice. The Press Council has found this “inexplicable“, and it doesn’t seem that the paper even […]
Where’s the media?
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008According to this report, Judge Harvey seems bemused that the media haven’t turned up to make submissions about his order allowing only non-online reporting of details about the Hapata case. “Not even an RSVP?” he’s reported to have asked.
The value of the press
Monday, September 1st, 2008From Winston Peters’ blog: Today we have been doing some jobs at home, pausing occaisionally [sic] to look out the window at the teams of journalists, camera people and photographers camping on the footpath. At the same time, it occurred to me that the money spent on these people could be used on a force […]
Defamation liability for threads on blogs and news websites
Sunday, August 31st, 2008Remember the basic rule of defamation: you publish it, you’re liable for it. That includes everyone involved in the publication. In a newspaper: the quoted source, the reporter, the subeditor, the editor, the publisher, the printer, the paperboy, and the bookshop. (The last three probably have a defence of innocent dissemination, as long as they’ve […]
Harvey’s online gag
Tuesday, August 26th, 2008Sounds like a prank website, doesn’t it? Of course, I mean Judge Harvey’s recent order that non-internet media can report on the proceedings against the accused killers of John Hapeta. Still, some people have been wondering: is this a joke? Isn’t trying to put a lid on the internet rather like trying to bottle a […]
Unprejudiced
Monday, August 25th, 2008Some defence lawyers have been getting their knickers in a knot about reporting on the Veitch case in yesterday’s Sunday Star-Times and Herald on Sunday. Can’t say I share their concerns. Certainly, now that charges have been laid, publishing material that tends to create a real risk of prejudice to Veitch’s trial will be a contempt […]
Hooten boasts of flouting the law
Sunday, August 24th, 2008I guess you have to admire Matthew Hooten’s honesty for admitting that, as a Beehive staffer, he’s advised departments to breach the Official Information Act. And I don’t doubt that this government does the same thing. But I find this high-fiving about it pretty sickening: As a Beehive staffer in the 1990s, I regularly “suggested” that […]
It’s defiance, Susan, but not as we know it
Sunday, August 24th, 2008Huh? Here’s Susan Pepperell’s lead in today’s Star-Times story about the Sensible Sentencing Trust’s plan to “defy” the Electoral Finance Act: Lobby group the Sensible Sentencing Trust is planning to defy the Electoral Finance Act in the lead-up to the general election. Its evidence that this will be an act of defiance? Read on: McVicar said […]
It’s censorship, John, but not as we know it
Friday, August 15th, 2008Poor John Boscowan. He’s been censored. I know this, because he’s got “censored” written across his full-page Sunday Star-Times ad opposing the Electoral Finance Act. Yes, apart from being one of the few people in the country able to afford to express his views in 850 words in a full-page ad in one of the […]
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