Media harassment
March 18, 2009
UK popster Lily Allen has obtained an order against paparazzi under the UK’s Protection from Harassment Act. Our Harassment Act contains similar provisions for anti-harassment orders. I’m not aware of any being used against the media here yet, but harassment is widely defined, and journalists or photographers who persistently hound people (including by accosting them or contacting them multiple times) may one day find themselves on the wrong end of a Harassment Act order.
Some imponderables: how might the defence of “lawful purpose” play out with respect to the media? Might the Act apply to repeated publications about someone? (If you look at the definition of “specified acts”, you’ll see that it’s a bit of a stretch to include merely publishing something about someone – is it really “making contact” with that person, or perhaps leaving offensive material where it can be found by them? If the publication contains threats, that may fit within s 4(1)(f) – causing someone to reasonably fear for their safety – defined to include mental well-being). A district court judge has suggested that the defences of truth and honest opinion should apply, though it’s not clear how that would fit with the scheme of the Harassment Act.
Topics: Harassment Act | Comments Off on Media harassment
Bouquets
March 16, 2009
Mediawatch this weekend was terrific. I think it’s absolutely at it’s best when it’s exposing serious media lapses. The two that Mediawatch highlighted this week illustrate what I think are two of the most common ethical failings: leaving things out because the story is sexier without it (as in the case of the surf rescue story that focused on heroics of one young kid to the exclusion of the other two slightly older ones whose involvement was crucial) and airing serious criticisms or claims (often by politicians) without properly checking out the context (as in the case of Nick Smith’s apparently exaggerated doom-mongering about ACC).
Take a bow, Colin Peacock and Jeremy Rose.
And from the same department (file under the third most common media screw-up: misunderstanding statistics) check out Keith Ng’s excellent demolition of the Herald’s front-page treatment of police statistics on crime at schools.
Topics: Media ethics | Comments Off on Bouquets
Sign up for Media Law conference
March 13, 2009
Lexis Nexus is running its annual media law conference in Auckland on 17 April 2009. I’ll be chairing it. It covers many of the hot issues in media law, including suppression, contempt, defamation, privacy, and from a range of angles – people involved in the litigation itself, academics analysing the end results, and journalists trying to make sense of it all.
Here’s the line-up:
Obtaining and challenging suppression orders Judge Charles Blakie, John Haigh QC and Garry Gotlieb
Contempt of court (and the Fairfax case) Robert Stewart (from Izard Weston, who represent Fairfax)
Defamation defences (and the Simunovich case) Willy Akel and Tracy Walker (from Simpson Grierson, who represent TVNZ)
Breach of confidence and privacy (and the Mosley and Hosking cases) Ursula Cheer and Rosemary Tobin, Assoc Profs at Canterbury and Auckland law schools
Addressing key challenges in journalism Paul Patrick TVOne news editor, Nevil Gibson, NBR editor-in-chief
The Broadcasting Standards Authority Jim Thomson, TVNZ, and me.
More information and registration details here.
Topics: General | Comments Off on Sign up for Media Law conference
Geddis on Crow
March 13, 2009
My mate Andrew Geddis has been sparring with me a bit in the comments section on this blog, and is always good value. In this thoughtful post at Pundit, Andrew rightly takes on the Auckland City Council for trying to do an end-run around the NZ Bill of Rights Act in its attempt to squelch porn king Steve Crow’s Boobs on Bikes parade. He hits on a theme that pervades this blog, and lies at the heart of the BORA: any restrictions on freedom of expression must be demonstrably justified, and that test is all the more important when the views being tackled are unpopular.
Topics: NZ Bill of Rights Act | Comments Off on Geddis on Crow
Sentences for sale
March 12, 2009
Private prisons in the US have bribed judges to lock up more offenders so they can receive more money for incarcerating them. Only in the US? Or should it be part of the debate here about privatising prisons?
[Update: I see TV One News did raise this point in a report last night.]
Topics: General | Comments Off on Sentences for sale
OK! magazine fakes front cover photo
March 12, 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. Victoria’s dress has also been changed from black to red. Another sliver of credibility lost to the media.
Topics: Media ethics | Comments Off on OK! magazine fakes front cover photo
ECHR upholds ongoing defamation liability for internet
March 12, 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 to convince the European Court of Human Rights that this ongoing liability for archived material is a disproportionate restriction on free speech has failed. The ECHR noted that internet archives are useful and important, but indicated that they may be controlled more strictly than the initial news stories, since publication is usually more pressing when they are first published. In other words, if you’re involved in archiving, you don’t get cut as much slack as those in the more urgent business of news gathering.
Of course, many news organisations do both. This case tells them that they probably can’t just dump the stories in the archives and expect to receive the same protection that might be received for the initial publication – particularly when they are alerted to a problem with the story.
The Court said it’s not unduly onerous to expect the operators of such archives to attach a note to archived material alerting readers that it is subject to a defamation suit – this will usually be sufficient to prevent liability. The judges criticised the Times for the length of time the paper took to attach a note to the archived news story.
The court noted that the Times was sued pretty promptly for both the initial defamation in the hard copy of the paper and the later (identical) defamation-by-download, so it hadn’t been prejudiced by delay. But it added:
while an aggrieved applicant must be afforded a real opportunity to vindicate his right to reputation, libel proceedings brought against a newspaper after a significant lapse of time may well, in the absence of exceptional circumstances, give rise to a disproportionate interference with press freedom…
So there may yet be limits to ongoing liability for archives.
Topics: Defamation, Internet issues | Comments Off on ECHR upholds ongoing defamation liability for internet
New draft broadcasting code for TV
March 9, 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). However, the new guidelines point to an expansion of the BSA’s trend toward taking a contextual approach to balance.
2. Impartiality is dropped from the guidelines for balance, and from the accuracy standard. It pops up in the accuracy guidelines – but only for “news”. It seems current affairs and factual programmes need no longer be impartial.
3. The changes to the Accuracy standard partly follow the changes to the radio code and require only that reasonable care to be taken with the accuracy of material points of fact. The requirement that fact and comment be clearly distinguishable has been dropped, but it’s spelled out that the accuracy standard only applies to “unqualified statements of fact” and not “analysis, comment or opinion”. Broadcasters have to correct “material errors” rather than “significant” ones, though it’s not clear what the difference is.
4. The radio code standard for accuracy makes it clear that a misleading broadcast may be inaccurate. (For example, when information is omitted that puts a whole different complexion on an issue, the broadcast might be found inaccurate because it’s misleading even though there’s nothing literally false. The BSA has always taken this approach, regardless of the wording of the code. It seems sensible for this to be reflected in the standard). For some reason, in the draft TV code the reference to “misleading” is in the guidelines, but not the standard itself.
5. The privacy principles seem to be unchanged.
6. Under fairness, the guideline that people (especially children) not be “exploited, humiliated or unnecessarily identified” has morphed into “exploited, humiliated or unfairly identified”. Seems fair enough to me.
7. Discriminiation and denigration get their own heading, instead of being lumped under fairness. The threshold for a successful complaint (always pretty high) seems to have been lifted: to breach the standard, a broadcaster would have to “encourage discrimination/denigration” instead of merely portraying persons in a manner that encourages discrimination/denigration.
Topics: Broadcasting Standards Authority | Comments Off on New draft broadcasting code for TV
Law Commission paper on privacy
March 9, 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 the Commission’s ongoing work on the Privacy Act and public registers. It seems the issues are getting bigger and harder by the year. Methinks the Commission better hurry up and resolve these issues before they become so big and hard that they are intractable.
Here are the key issues, according to the Commission’s press release:
- Is there a value in a tort of invasion of privacy by publicity given to private facts? If so, should it be left to the common law?
- Are any new criminal offences needed to deal with specific types of intrusion?
- Should there be a tort of intrusion into a person’s seclusion? If so, should its development be left to the common law or should it be introduced by statute?
- Should closed circuit television surveillance be regulated?
- Should there be any civil or criminal liability for certain uses of surveillance devices when they are used outside the law enforcement arena?
- Are any reforms to the law needed to deal with voyeurism not involving the use of recording devices, including reform of the “peeping and peering” offence?
- Should the media be subject to any greater or lesser legal restrictions concerning privacy intrusions than other members of the public?
The Commission is seeking feedback by 29 May.
Topics: Privacy tort | Comments Off on Law Commission paper on privacy
Police search warrants against the media
March 3, 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, in a case where there is no suggestion that the media organisation has committed any offence and it has done no more than record events which may include the commission of offences by others, is that the intrusive procedure of a search warrant should not be used for trivial or truly minor cases. [The Court felt that protesters overcoming naval personnel to replace the flag at Waitangi treaty grounds was sufficiently serious, particularly as they were “calculated insults to the constitution of New Zealand”].
…
A second guideline is that, as far as practicable, a warrant should not be granted or executed so as to impair the public dissemination of news… in the present case the company appears to have already broadcast what it wanted from the tapes in its news programmes.
…
A third guideline is that only in exceptional circumstances where it is truly essential in the interests of justice should a warrant be granted or executed if there is a substantial risk that it will result in the “drying-up” of confidential sources of information for the media. In this case again there appears to be no risk of that kind. The tapes simply recorded public events.
A fourth guideline is that a warrant should be executed considerately and so as to cause the least practicable disruption to the business of the media organisation. In this instance, had the appellant so wished it might have been possible for the police to view the tapes at the studio and to take away only those found to be of significant evidential value…
A fifth guideline for the grant of a warrant relates to the relative importance of the tapes for the purposes of a prosecution. [A warrant may be issued] “when it is likely that the film will have a direct and important place in the determination of the issues before the Court.” It must be remembered that the evidential value of tapes may because of their accuracy exceed that of accounts by eye witnesses. In a confused situation involving the actions of many members of a crowd the … recording may be fairer to all concerned than eyewitness evidence. While the availability of other evidence is a factor for consideration, the superior reliability of a film will often outweigh it.
Can we be forgiven for wondering how helpful Holmes’s tape is likely be, especially given how long the police seem to have waited to make this application. Besides, would Veitch and Holmes have really allowed anything incriminating to be on that tape?
Topics: Journalism and criminal law, Search warrants | Comments Off on Police search warrants against the media
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