Law lecture notes Week 8

Freedom Of Information Act


130,000 bodies covered by the act
100,000 requests a year - cost £34m
Journalists requests only accounts for 12%

Politicians claim the FOI has a "chilling effect" on government as they don't feel safe or free to discuss issues that could become  damaging to them if they found their way into a document.

Tony Blair, who brought in the act - "FOI was not a good idea... makes it hard for government to have confidential conversations."

Basic principle of the FOI act;

"Any person making a request for information to a public authority is entitled to have that information communicated to him."

An FOI request must be in writing, email included and it is free.

If it costs more than £600 (£450 for smaller authorities) or if the information is EXEMPT. But you do not have to accept this decision.

Exemptions:
Absolute (eg security services, court records)
Qualified (eg ministerial communications, commercial confidentiality)
Where the information is covered by a qualified exemption, you should still be given it if the balance of the 'pubic interest' favours disclosure.

Public interest - within the publics interest, not just interesting to the public.

The public authority has to respond to an FOI request within 20 days unless there is a public interest consideration then they can take a further 40 days.

What if they say no?
Internal review
Information Commisioner
Information Tribunal
High Court

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

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.

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

Earlier I was walking home from the railway station and just crossing the busy road by the roundabout just near the airport, but I was distracted on the phone and whilst crossing came within inches of being run over. I saw that flash of headbeam from the car and for a second as I sprinted across the road my mind was clear. As I continued to walk down the road an ambulance came screeching up the opposite way and I got this odd feeling that WHAT IF... I actually HAD of been hit and that ambulance was for me? But I was unaware of it in some other parallel world and so carried on with my journey home?

What if I'm dead?

Somebody please help me confirm my existence.

The Forgotten Generation

I apoloise in advance but the following is a tail end thought following the recent general elections...

Cast your mind back to when you were 18. Where did YOUR priorities lie? Were they in choosing the right political party to vote for to better your country? Did they lie in; global warming, NHS matters or even international affairs? Or were you one of the hundreds of thousands of 18 year olds (like me) who was absolutely clueless on politics, worried more about where your next lambrini and kebab was coming from or whether you could afford that pair of shoes this month... BUT admitted if desired to go into the polling station and select a party with a a blind eye or whichever name tickled your pickle.

I met a 17 year old girl recently who didn't know who the Prime Minister was. She actually did not know who ran the country. At first I was shocked but given a few moments to think I thought, actually, politicians don't really communicate very well with the younger generation or explain their policies and what they're about in any sort of colloquial language that could be understood by every walk of life. If you watch the news, David Cameron as well as the other party leaders are all guilty of using jargon terms that only middle class, well educated people generally understand. This means a majority of young people are choosing to throw their vote away or choose at random. Perhaps if they spent a little time reaching out to these youths then they might adopt some sort of interest in the economic state of the country.

Perhaps the candidates should consider this in the next general election...