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Press Council agrees with me

Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010

You might remember that I lambasted the Sunday Star-Times for its misleading front-page headline “Sex attack gets drunk driver off”. The story was about a woman convicted of drunk driving who hadn’t even appealed that conviction, only her sentence. Well, Andrew Geddis was equally incensed, and complained to the Press Council. It upheld the complaint.

Pike River privacy breach

Friday, November 26th, 2010

My colleague, privacy expert Dr Nicole Moreham, reckons the media are guilty of breach of privacy with their splashy coverage of the victims’ grief-stricken families emerging from the briefing where they were informed of their loved ones’ fate. She has kindly allowed me to cross-post (original source here): There would be few New Zealanders who […]

UK Parliamentary committee recommends reform of media regulation

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

The British Culture, Media and Sport Committee has released its report into press standards, privacy and libel. Recommendations: Privacy tort: No change. In particular, no legal requirement for the media to give notice to people who’s privacy they’re about to invade in an upcoming story, though a failure to provide such notice should hike any […]

Chasing Ali

Monday, February 15th, 2010

The latest development in the Alison Mau saga reads like a media law exam question. On Breakfast TV she took a swipe at Woman’s Day, saying its “paparazzi photographer has been stalking me, my children and my friends for a month now, quite possibly more, following me to the supermarket, the kids’ tennis and touch […]

Ethics inquiry into 13-year-old dad story

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

The UK’s Press Complaints Commission is looking into the ethics of The Sun’s story about a 13-year-old fathering a child. On what grounds, you ask? In NZ, the issue might be the child’s privacy (can a boy really consent to a story like that?) or whether the paper had “particular care and consideration for reporting […]

Talk about giving with one hand…

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008

On the same day the Hawke’s Bay Today was writing to Peter Hausmann to offer to correct its editorial of five days earlier for inaccurately founded attacks, guess what it printed in its paper? The same inaccurately founded attacks. Nice. The Press Council has found this “inexplicable“, and it doesn’t seem that the paper even […]

But is it privacy?

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

The Evening Standard has printed an apology for falsely reporting that Prince Philip was suffering from prostate cancer: We now accept that the story was untrue and that he is not suffering from any such condition. We unreservedly apologise both to him and to his family for making this distressing allegation and for breaching his […]

Regulating broadcasting content

Monday, May 26th, 2008

You may know that the government is having a big think about what to do about the patchwork of increasingly moth-eaten laws and regimes that govern broadcasting content. It has produced discussion papers and invited feedback. The submissions are here. More on this soon.

ACCURACY UNDER ATTACK

Friday, April 18th, 2008

As 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 […]

Highlights from Press Council forum

Sunday, March 16th, 2008

Top 10 most interesting points from Thursday’s public forum, “The Press and the Right to Know Under Siege”, where the speakers were Law Commissioner John Burrows QC and the chairs of the Australian and NZ Press Councils, Professor Ken McKinnon and Barry Paterson QC: Barry Paterson, a retired High Court judge, “hated TV in the […]

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