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Tuesday, May 26th, 2009A wave of important media law cases is hitting the Canadian Supreme Court. One’s on qualified privilege and I’ve discussed it here. The others include cases on confidential sources and bail hearing publication bans. I’m inclined to think that the guidance on free speech issues from the Canadian SC tends to be the most thoughtful, […]
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”?
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 […]
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 […]
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.]
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. […]
Boscawen appeal fails
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009The Court of Appeal has thrown out the Bill of Rights challenge to the Electoral Finance Act. That’s not to say that they thought the EFA was consistent with the BORA. Just that they wouldn’t consider the issue. I’m not too surprised that they threw out the challenge to the Attorney-General’s decision not to report […]
Lundy 2
Thursday, February 12th, 2009Here’s one thing the prosecutors could have said to White about the Lundy case: Lundy filled his gas tank in Wellington. The fuel warning was flashing when he got back to Palmerston North. How did Lundy manage to empty the tank in one normal-speed trip back to Palmerston North plus a bit of driving in […]
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