ACCURACY UNDER ATTACK
Friday, April 18th, 2008As an occasional critic of the Press Council in the past, it would be churlish of me not to acknowledge its robust (and unanimous) ruling in a complaint I brought on behalf of the Coalition for Open Government. The complaint was mostly about the NZ Herald’s front page editorial excoriating the Electoral Finance Bill, headed […]
New notice-and-takedown regime for ISPs
Thursday, April 10th, 2008Under the most significant provisions of the new amendments to the Copyright Act (which have been passed by Parliament but haven’t yet come into force), ISPs can be liable if their users infringe copyright. But only if: They’ve authorised or controlled the copying; or They’ve stored the material and know or have reason to believe […]
Indian IPL league manacles reporters
Thursday, April 10th, 2008You can film our 20/20 matches, but you can’t put pictures on the web. Oh, and we can use any pictures you take as we like, for free. These are the reporting conditions proposed for the IPL’s new cricket league. The UK’s Newspaper Publishers Association calls them “some of the most restrictive and burdensome access arrangements […]
Canadian Supreme Court to decide on new defamation defence
Thursday, April 10th, 2008Leave has been granted for the Canadian Supreme Court to rule on whether Canada will recognise a public interest/responsible journalism defence along the lines of Reynolds in the UK (and related to the Lange cases in NZ and Australia). I discussed the Canadian Court of Appeal decision here. The Canadian decision is likely to be […]
BSA in a bind
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008I think the BSA has broken the law. I think they’ve done it in order to avoid breaking the law. Confused? Let me explain. They’ve issued a decision upholding (by majority) a complaint against TVNZ’s Sunday programme on grounds of inaccuracy and unfairness. But the decision contains no reasoning. It seems this is because the reasoning […]
BSA round-up
Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008When showing graphic footage (such as autopsy photos) on the news, the broadcaster should use a warning, and put the graphic footage far enough into the news item to give parents a chance to turn off the TV. When running a story about a campaign against child abuse, showing some photos of the beaten body […]
UK political broadcast ad ban upheld
Monday, March 31st, 2008In NZ, we ban the broadcast of election ads, except for those paid for out of the broadcasting allocation. That means a pot of about $3 million of public money gets divvied up between the parties (along with a bit of free air time that some publicly minded stations throw in) – and that’s the […]
Headline: Police do good job
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008You don’t see that headline too often. This is a bit off-topic, but I had an experience of an emergency 111 call-out over Easter. It turned out to be a false alarm, but police were there within five minutes (a second car arrived a couple of minutes later). They were thoroughly professional. Well done, them. […]
Helpful access-to-court-records case
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008This judgment from Harrison J is a useful addition to journalists’ armoury in their ongoing battle for access to court files. The Sunday News wanted to see the file on Matthew Ridge’s leaky home litigation. The Registrar refused, saying that the paper needed to show “an interest [in the case] greater than that of the public at […]
Just click the link
Thursday, March 20th, 2008Do it now. It takes a minute or so. The lesson might last a lifetime. And I think it has something to say about the media, too.
« Previous Entries Next Entries »