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Archive for March, 2009

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OK! magazine fakes front cover photo

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

More grist for those worried about digital manipulation. OK! has a front page photo of Cheryl Cole with her arm around Victoria Beckham (click on the magnifying glass at bottom right for the whole photo) to illustrate its story about the two making up. But it’s a montage. They weren’t even at the same event. […]

ECHR upholds ongoing defamation liability for internet

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

One of the rules of defamation law is that each separate publication of something that’s defamatory gives rise to separate liability. So each time someone downloads a defamatory article, there’s a fresh publication and a new potential lawsuit. You can see how this might give rise to some headaches for news archives. However, an attempt […]

New draft broadcasting code for TV

Monday, March 9th, 2009

The BSA has released a new draft of the free-to-air TV code for public consultation. The proposed changes are conveniently set out alongside the existing provisions. The changes that leap out at me: 1. Balance is renamed “Controversial issues – viewpoints”. But the substance remains the same (it has to: it’s in the Broadcasting Act). […]

Law Commission paper on privacy

Monday, March 9th, 2009

The Law Commission has released yet another paper on privacy. “These are big issues and they are hard,” says Commission president Sir Geoffrey Palmer. 300 pages big and hard, in fact, building on 2008’s 222-page paper “Privacy: concepts and issues” (discussed here), 2007’s 76-page “A conceptual approach to privacy” by Mark Hickford, and that’s not counting […]

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, […]

Another Bain beat-up

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

I 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. […]

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