Thursday 21 October 2010

Law - Privilege



Privilege allows us as journalists to write or broadcast material which may be defamatory or untrue or even both at the same time. It gives us protection from being sued.

Absolute Privilege -
Anything said in court. Judges, lawyers and MP’s have it

It is from the monarch, so as it is to do with the trial they can't be prosecuted for it.

Qualified Privilege -
As long as reports are fair, accurate, without malice and on a matter of public concern
Journalists have Qualified Privilege in Parliament/Court/public meetings Reporting


Statements that qualify for qualified privilege without explanation are as follows;
  • Fair and accurate reports of public proceedings of legislatures, courts, government appointed public inquiries, international organisations/conferences anywhere in the world.
  • A fair and accurate copy of or extract from any register or other document required by law to be open to public inspection.
  • A notice or advertisement published by or on the authority of a court, or of a judge or officer of a court, anywhere in the world.
  • A fair and accurate copy of or extract from matter published by or on the authority of a government or legislature or by an international organisation or an international conference anywhere in the world.
- Lee Clegg case, significant



Privilege Part 1


  • Public proceedings in a legislature anywhere in world (ie Russia)
  • Public proceedings in a court anywhere in world
  • Public proceedings of a public inquiry anywhere in world
  • Public proceedings of an international organisation or conference

Privilege part 2



  • Subject to explanation and contradiction
  • Public meetings
  • Local councils and committees
  • Associations have different status
  • Findings or decisions are covered - official
  • Proceedings are not 
Pressers
  • Pressers are public meetings
  • Written hand outs also covered
  • Consider risks of live broadcasting

Privilege summed up
  • Report must be;
  • Fair
  • Accurate
  • Without malice
  • On a matter of public interest
  • No privilege outside main proceedings
Page 340




Tuesday 19 October 2010

Defamation and Libel

  After a year of HCJ learning all about exciting philosophers and their work I was more than underwhelmed to say goodbye to the likes of Emile Zola, Fredrich Nietzche and Freud and welcome Law for Journalists back into my life. It would be fair to say that law is definitely a weak point of mine BUT after two lectures I found it all coming back. Here are some notes so far.

Defamation and Libel 

To break it down in simple terms, defamation is taking away a reputation to which a person is entitled. There are two types of defamation. These are; slander (defamation in the temporary form) and libel (defamation in the permanent form)

Reputation is precious to those who have a public life, money or both. To say something about someone in the public eye that you know to be untrue would be said with malice. If it threatens that persons reputation then you have defamed them and therefore committed a libel.

However, most mere abuse has a certain degree of legal safety. "You smell" for example. Most defamatory is about a persons qualifications. A doctors professional reputation is absolutely vital for them to carry on in their profession. You wouldn't seek out a doctor to help your ailments if they've been accused of raping, poisoning or misdiagnosing patients... would you?

One famous case where this happened was, Rahamin vs. Channel 4/ITN
In July 1998 channel 4 broadcast a major news report on the 7o’clock news that made allegations against locum consultant Joseph Rahamin that he claimed were not only untrue but also defamatory as they damaged his personal AND professional reputations. The accusations made were that:

  • Mr. Rahamim was probably responsible for the death or serious injury of many of his patients including two who had died during their operations
  • Mr Rahamim was not competent to practice as a consultant thoracic surgeon and was seriously under qualified and inadequately trained.
  • That he had fraudulently obtained his post as a Consultant by misrepresenting his qualifications and employment history.
  • That he had dishonestly sent out letters to local GP’s in which he had falsely described himself as an FRCS
  • That he had dishonestly concealed from his employers the fact that as a result of injuries sustained in a road accident he was unable to operate safely and
  • That by reason of these matters the GMC ought to have Mr. Rahamim struck off.
Publication + defamation + identification = Libel

The only libel defences are as follows;

Justification - If it is true and you can prove it in court
Fair comment - An honest held opinion which is based upon facts or privileged material within the public interest.
Absolute Privilege - Court reporting
Qualified Privilege - Anything said by the police or pressers
Bane + Antidote - when the defamation is removed or cancelled out by the rest of the context

Cartoons are totally exempt from libel, this is why you can often find cartoons in the first few pages of The Sun newspaper that poke fun at celebrities or politicians who have been in the public eye during the week.

If a libel is present without any of these defences then steps should be taken to apologise in a later edition of the publication.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3065451/Marlon-King-An-apology.html

Here is a recent example of arguably the biggest tabloid newspaper in Britain apologising for defaming imprisoned footballer, Marlon King.

Reynolds defence

Named after a defence raised in the late 1990s by Times Newspapers after the Sunday Times published an article about the former Irish prime minister, Albert Reynolds. Mr Reynolds sued, arguing the allegations in the article were not true and were defamatory. The newspaper argued that the allegations it published were serious and that it had a duty to publish them. They were, it argued, made in the public interest and after they'd exercised all reasonable care in checking. Even if the allegations were not true, they argued they should have been able to report them and be legally protected by 'qualified privilege'. - Kevin Marsh BBC News


Material must be in the public interest... a product of responsible journalism.

WINOL week two!

Apologies for this late blog entry... I've been dying of chest and throat infections. Phlegm and snot flying everywhere! Not pretty.

Anywho... week two. The news meeting on the monday showed a bit more promise than the first week with our top story affecting international students, a high profile court case and even a story about the Queen. Unfortunately things didn't go quite to plan as the week progressed. Andy fell ill on Tuesday forcing us to postpone the court case story, we had new information emerge changing the context of Jacks international students story and Aimee struggled getting interviews on her trip to Southampton to film the Queens naming of the Queen Elizabeth ship so we had to make it into a NIB (News In Brief).

Further to this. In production the tricaster blew up meaning WINOL went backwards in technical progression and we had to upload the bulletin to Youtube instead. This takes longer so we aimed to film the bulletin at 2pm by bringing all the VT deadlines forward but the Macs in TAB9 have become so slow since we came back after summer that they crash every two minutes so of course these new early deadlines were impossible to be met! We ended up filming just before 3pm and somehow managed to get the bulletin out at 5pm as planned.

Scripting was much better, largely the story links submitted. This was helped by the presence of guest editor Graham Bell.

Wednesday 6 October 2010

WINOL IS BACK! Week one....

It's Wednesday, it's 2pm and it's a WINOL week which could only mean one thing. Absolute mayhem in the news room. As news editor I have taken on a role which has enforced me to drop my niceties and become less passive in my mannerisms.

The Monday morning news meeting was okay, but I've a long way to go before I will feel like I can say I've managed to bring the group together as a successful unit. The second years who have produced a package have done a great job for a first attempt. Certainly miles ahead of what I could have achieved this time last year. There is a slight disrespect of deadlines though and that is something I will be pushing on next week.

As far as the bulletin goes I am very excited as our political editor, Joey managed to become Winchester Mp, Steve Brine's plus one for the Conservative conference in Birmingham. This is leading the bulletin today and we have a story about a Lib Dem by election to follow by Stu. As Joey and Stu are third year reporters I knew I wouldn't have many technical issues with their VT's and so left them at their own devices.

The other stories being reported today are; a student finance story by Julie Cordier, a story investigating a winchester area dubbed 'stabby alley' by Andrew Giddings and... some teams played sports.

I am very anxious to see how the bulletin is going to go, considering for many of the reporters this is their first shot but from what I've seen they're doing ok and if worst comes to worst this is only scheduled as a dummy week so we can draw a line under it and move on.

Tune into www.winol.co.uk after 4pm to see how we did.

Kisses x