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What can Crown lawyers say to the media?

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

The Crown Law Office has put out a very sensible, but rather general, protocol containing guidance for prosecutors when dealing with media inquiries. It doesn’t mention civil proceedings, but it does apply to the Crown Law Office itself, and the general principles at the beginning seem broad enough to cover civil cases too. It makes […]

House of Lords supports dumping criminal libel

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

And about time. We’ve already got rid of it. Mind you, the Aussie state of Victoria, where I am right now, still recognises criminal libel – which includes defamation of dead people and defamation where’s there’s no publication to anyone but the person defamed – and the defences (except truth) aren’t clear. Who knew? Looks […]

Campbell in the soup?

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009

You’ve probably heard that the police have asked the judge in the Waiouru Army medals case to order John Campbell and Ingrid Leary to answer questions that may disclose the identity of their source. (That source being, of course, one of the thieves, with whom Campbell famously performed his Clayton’s interview.) The journalists have promised not […]

Police search warrants against the media

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

In light of the police’s impending execution of a search warrant on the offices of the Herald on Sunday over Holmes’s (apparently) recorded interview with Tony Veitch, I thought y’all might be interested in the Court of Appeal’s guidelines for the issue of such warrants (from TVNZ v Attorney-General [1995] 2 NZLR 641): One guideline, […]

Picking up the Bill

Tuesday, August 5th, 2008

Did whoever surreptitiously recorded Bill English break the law? What about the media who published the conversation or its contents? It’s a crime to tape a conversation between other people if the circumstances indicate that one of the conversers wants it to be private (section 216B of the Crimes Act). I have no idea how […]

How the Clean Slate Act applies to the media

Tuesday, May 20th, 2008

The Clean Slate Act effectively expunges people’s old, minor criminal offences. But does that mean the media can’t publish them? Reading the Act as a whole, it looks like it doesn’t. Yes, it’s an offence for a journalist to ask someone to disregard the Act, which allows people to lie about particular convictions if they […]

Crimes in the public interest

Thursday, February 14th, 2008

A quick note on recent stouch about the journalist who took a knife and toy gun on a regional flight to demonstrate lax security. (Bonus gossip: it was Jonathan Marshall, who was behind a hideously intrusive celebrity expose website, but has since taken a journalism course and is doing serious work). I say: give that man […]

Solicitor-General to prosecute Fairfax for contempt

Friday, December 21st, 2007

The DomPost is reporting that the papers that ran the “terrorism files” story are to be prosecuted for contempt. The S-G has also set his sights on DomPost editor Tim Pankhurst, but not the editors of the Press or the Waikato Times. The essence of the allegation is that the stories will interfere with the […]

DomPost editor says a bunch of interesting stuff

Wednesday, December 12th, 2007

DomPost editor Tim Pankhurst gave a very interesting keynote address at the Jeanz conference called “The Power of Print”. Here are some highlights: The relevance of print  The DomPost’s coverage of Louise Nicholas, Donna Awatere Huata, the Capital and Coast Health issues and the “Terrorism files” shows that print has “undiminished power” – in the […]

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