Reporting restrictions might not apply to bloggers

There is an interesting story from outlaw.com concerning blogging and reporting restrictions.(ht-Martin Stabe)

It reports on the case a boy said to have fathered a child at 12 years of age which has highlighted that bloggers might be able to escape reporting restrictions on sensitive court cases because they have not been informed of the restrictions.

There is no central database of reporting restrictions, so while newspapers are informed of restrictions, bloggers generally are not, opening a legal loophole for their possible publishing of restricted information.

On defamation

Caroline Kean at Press Gazette writes a good piece on Morrisey's case for defamation against the New Musical Express.


For students of journalism,she gives a good synopsis of the case and the legal arguments that may come up.

Bearing in mind that the alleged defamation was carried out in an interview,Caroline says

Consent is a classic defence to a claim in defamation. If an interviewee makes derogatory statements about themselves, the interviewer is entitled to publish these. So does Morrissey have a claim?
The defence of consent by implication refers to informed consent. It would not be a defence to a claim in defamation to show that the answer to a question had been reported accurately, if the question to which that answer was given was fundamentally different to the one published.

One for those studying journalism law

Press Gazette reports the lifting of the anomynity of a youth who had attacked a Catholic priest on the grounds of public interest.

The reporter from the Lancashire evening post

" handed the bench a note asking the court to lift the anonymity Walch automatically receives under section 49 of the Children and Youth Persons Act 1933, saying that it was in the public interest that the teenager should be named, particularly as he was already subject to an anti-social behaviour order (Asbo).
Hall said: "I was pleased when the court lifted the restriction. It meant we could tell our readers about what this young offender had done.

Legal rulings

Kevin Marsh writing on the BBC editors blog,brings our attention to the case of Graeme Mc Laggan,whose book Bent Coppers was the subject of a legal action by a former flying squad officer

An appeal by the publishers succeeded on the basis of the "Reynolds defence" a legal precedent that gives investigative journalists under which according to Guardian media


" journalists can claim the right to publish material in the public interest even if they cannot prove its accuracy or it turns out to be untrue."

Of course this is no carte blanche excuse for journalists to write what they want.

The law lords ruled in 2001 that

1.the writing had to be of sober intent.
2.its subject should be important
3.of urgent public interest.

A check on the rise of the citizen journalist

There was a good piece in yesterday's Independent entitled "beware the march of citizen journalism.


One of the issues that is not always at the forefront of discussions on the subject is the legal implications for journalists,after all the ordinary person with his video phone will not be aware of reporting restrictions.

The piece recounts the following complaint upheld by the PCC

A 16-year-old pupil at John Ogilvie High School in Hamilton, near Glasgow, used her mobile phone to take a video of her fellow pupils misbehaving in class. The Hamilton Advertiser, a local paper, not only ran the story in print but also uploaded the video on to its website.
Two other papers, The Scottish Sun and the Scottish Daily Mirror, also used images from the video to illustrate stories concerning lax school discipline.
The president of the school's parents' and teachers' association, Laura Gaddis, lodged a complaint against all three publications on the grounds the newspapers had not obtained permission to use the images.