Archive for the “Media and Communications” Category
 Next week, the School of Law, Trinity College Dublin, will host a conference on
Recent Developments in Irish Defamation Law – Including the Defamation Act, 2009
It will be on from 9:30am to 1:15pm on Saturday, 28 November 2009, in the Davis Theatre, Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin.
As regular readers of this blog will know, Irish Defamation law has undergone a number of radical changes in the last twelve months including, most notably, the changes which are to be wrought by the newly enacted Defamation Act, 2009 (pdf). These changes will significantly influence the way in which defamation cases are to be managed and may, potentially, represent a shift in the traditional balance between plaintiffs and defendants in defamation cases. The conference will consider the nature of such changes. Here’s the provisional programme:
09:00 Registration
09:30 Paul O’Higgins, SC The Defamation Act from the Plaintiff’s Perspective
09:55 Eoin McCullough, SC The Defamation Act from the Defendant’s
Perspective
10:20 Paula Mullooly The Defamation Act from the Solicitor’s Perspective
10:45 Questions and Discussion
11:00 Tea/Coffee Break
11:15 Brendan Kirwan BL Injunctive Relief and Remedies
11:40 Ray Ryan BL Key Points of Practice and Procedure in Defamation
12:05 Dr Eoin Carolan BL Alternative Causes of Action
12:30 Dr Eoin O’Dell The Defamation Act: The Constitutional Dimension
12:55 Questions and Discussion
13:15 Conference Ends
14:30 Ireland v South Africa (Croke Park)
For more information or to make a reservation, please phone ((01) 896 2367), fax ((01) 677 0449), email, or visit the website.
Other forthcoming events in the Law School are listed here; other forthcoming Law events in Ireland are listed here by Darius.
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Posted by Eoin in Blogging, Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, Censorship, Copyright, Cyberlaw, Digital Rights, Freedom of Expression, Media and Communications, Regulation, Universities, tags: Academic Freedom, Holocaust, journalism
 I suppose if I spent ages thinking about it, I could find a spurious thread linking three stories that caught my eye over the last few days, but in truth there is none, except that they update matters which I have already discussed on this blog. (Oh, all right then, they’re all about different aspects of freedom of expression: the first shows that copyright should not prevent academic discussion; the second shows that hecklers should not have a veto; and the third is about broadcasting regulation).
First, I had noted the proclivity of the estate of James Joyce to be vigorous in defence of its copyrights; but it lost a recent case and now has agreed to pay quite substantial costs as a consequence:
The James Joyce Estate has agreed to pay $240,000 (€164,000) in legal costs incurred by an American academic following a long-running copyright dispute between the two sides. The settlement brings to an end a legal saga that pre-dates the publication in 2003 of a controversial biography of Joyce’s daughter, Lucia, written by Stanford University academic Carol Shloss. …
More: ABA Journal | Chronicle | Law.com | San Francisco Chronicle | Slashdot | Stanford CIS (who represented Shloss) esp here | Stanford University News (a long and informative article).
Second, I have long been of the view that hecklers should not be allowed to veto unpopular views, and none come more unpopular that holocaust-denier David Irving. Now comes news that NUI Galway’s Lit & Deb society have withdrawn their controversial invitation to Irving for security reasons:
The proposed visit of the controversial historian David Irving to the NUI, Galway Literary & Debating Society has been cancelled. In a statement the Lit & Deb said the cancellation was “due to security concerns and restrictions imposed by the university authorities”. …
Read the rest of this entry »
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 The Broadcasting Act, 2009 (pdf) sets the regulatory framework for broadcasting services in Ireland. It consolidates all Irish broadcasting legislation into a single Act, and establishes a new Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI, incorporating the functions of the current Broadcasting Commission and RTÉ Authority). According to Paul Cullen in today’s Irish Times, the BAI is to be established this week:
A new authority with powers to regulate all broadcasting, both commercial and RTÉ, is due to come into existence this week.
The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) is expected to begin operations next Tuesday once the Cabinet approves five nominations to its board by Minister for Communications Eamon Ryan. The remaining four board members will be appointed by the Government on the nomination of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications.
A little while ago, the Sunday Business Post reported that the Committee has decided to advertise those posts, so that it will be some time before they are appointed and that the Board will be only partially in place this week. Whether fully or partially established, there will be much for it to. For example, Cullen reports that
… One of the first tasks of the new authority will be to draw up new rules governing the advertising of junk foods on television, something which is specifically provided for in the new legislation. A new code to govern religious advertising is also in planning. …
Inevitably, however, not all of its proposed work has met with approval. For example, writing in yesterday’s Sunday Independent, Colum Kenny also noted that the BAI is expected to be established this week, but raises some alarm bells:
Curb on offensive material is only one of the tricky issues facing new watchdog, says Colum Kenny
THE new Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) has powers to fine broadcasters that “cause offence”. … The Broadcasting Act 2009 has introduced a duty on broadcasters to ensure that “anything which may reasonably be regarded as causing harm or offence” is not broadcast. …
The Department of Communications said last week that the new provision simply replaces former requirements relating to “taste and decency” and is in line with international practice. … Causing offence can be a constitutional right. It is also a good thing if it shakes people out of complacency about institutional hypocrisy or challenges personal misbehaviour. … Just how the BAI will interpret its duty to stop all broadcasters from causing harm or offence will emerge when complaints are made to it or to its new Broadcasting Compliance Committee. The existing BCI has been slow to intervene in the provision of content, allowing considerable freedom to broadcasters to do as they wish. …
Section 39(1) of the Act provides in part (with emphasis added):
Every broadcaster shall ensure that—
…
(d) anything which may reasonably be regarded as causing harm or offence, or as being likely to promote, or incite to, crime or as tending to undermine the authority of the State, is not broadcast by the broadcaster, and
(e) in programmes broadcast by the broadcaster, and in the means employed to make such programmes, the privacy of any individual is not unreasonably encroached upon.
Like Colum, I am also uncomfortable with elements that provision, but a similar offence clause in the UK survived challenge in R v BBC ex parte Pro Life Alliance [2004] 1 AC 185, [2003] UKHL 23 (10 April 2003), and I doubt that an Irish court would come to a different conclusion.
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 There is a wonderful essay by Michael Massing in the current edition of the New York Review of Books about the deepening relationship between print and online journalism. In form, it’s a review of Eric Boehlert Bloggers on the Bus: How the Internet Changed Politics and the Press (Free Press | Amazon), which traces the online events that affected the 2008 presidential campaign and reveals the stories of the internet activists who made them all possible, and Bill Wasik And Then There’s This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture (Viking | Amazon), which seeks to demonstrate that the rise of the internet means that our culture is now created from the ground up. Common to both books is the argument that a small online quiver can easily become a massive earthquake in the real world. In fact, Massing’s piece is a fascinating assessment of the state of journalism on the internet, filled with references to all sorts of blogs, but which only tangentially touches on Boehlert’s and Wasik’s book. In that, I suppose, it’s much more like a long blogpost than a traditional book review.
Indeed, Massing’s piece almost resembles a blogpost in another way: the online version has links to many of the online sources referred to in the piece, a practice other publications could adopt, to save me having to add links when I quote paragraphs from newspaper websites – it is this kind of added value that makes online reporting different from the paper kind, and the sooner newspapers realise that the online version is not simply the text of the paper version, the better. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating that the online version replace the paper version – indeed, I read the paper version of the article first – just that online versions should fulfill their potential. And anyway, the Review’s practice of putting a list of links at the start of the article rather than embedding them in the text only goes half way, so in the extracts below, I’ve still had to add the links.
The core of his argument is in this extract (though the whole thing is well worth reading, even on paper, over a cup of coffee):
In an online chat with readers earlier this year, New York Times executive editor Bill Keller deplored the “diminishing supply of quality journalism” at a time of “growing demand.” … Keller’s lament—one of a steady chorus rising from the industry—contains a feature common to many of them: a put-down of the Web and the bloggers who regularly comment on Web sites. …
This image of the Internet as parasite has some foundation. Without the vital news-gathering performed by established institutions, many Web sites would sputter and die. In their sweep and scorn, however, such statements seem as outdated as they are defensive. Over the past few months alone, a remarkable amount of original, exciting, and creative (if also chaotic and maddening) material has appeared on the Internet. The practice of journalism, far from being leeched by the Web, is being reinvented there, with a variety of fascinating experiments in the gathering, presentation, and delivery of news. And unless the editors and executives at our top papers begin to take note, they will hasten their own demise.
Massing traces the history of journalistic blogging from the Mickey Kaus and Andrew Sullivan “snip-it-and-comment approach”, via blogs that not only comment on the news but also break it, to “an emerging new breed of ‘hybrids,’ schooled in both the practices of print journalism and the uses of cyberspace” as well as to online commentators and citizen-journalists (though he uses neither of these terms); the internet offers a podium to those
… of all ages and backgrounds who are flush with ideas but lack the means to transmit them. A good example is Marcy Wheeler, … [who] first began blogging in 2004, gaining notice for her posts on the Valerie Plame leak case; in early 2007 she “liveblogged” the Lewis Libby trial. Later that year, after giving up her consulting job, she began blogging full-time for FireDogLake …
“The idea that our work is parasitical is farcical,” Wheeler told me by phone. “There’s a lot of good, original work in the blogosphere. Half of all journalists look at the blogosphere when working on a story.” At the same time, she said, “I’m happy to admit I’m still utterly reliant on journalists …” … “We ought to be talking about a symbiotic rather than a parasitical relationship,” she told me. What disturbs bloggers, she added, are those journalists who reside in “the Village”—shorthand, she said, “for the compliant, unquestioning, conventional wisdom that comes out of Washington. …”.
The blogosphere, by contrast, has proven especially attractive to those who, despite having specialized knowledge about a subject, have little access to the nation’s Op-Ed pages. … Beyond such individual sites, the Web has helped open up entire subjects that were once off-limits to the press. …
But Massing admits that it’s not all roses here in the world of electrons and computer screens; and this allows him a paragraph each on the books putatively under review. First, bloggers often reject the attempts at “balance” that are made by mainstream print publications, though of course
… it’s their willingness to dispense with such conventions that makes the blogosphere a lively and bracing place. This is nowhere more apparent than in the work of Glenn Greenwald. A lawyer and former litigator, Greenwald is a relative newcomer to blogging, having begun only in December 2005, but as Eric Boehlert notes in his well-researched but somewhat breathless Bloggers on the Bus, within six months of his debut he “had ascended to an unofficial leadership position within the blogosphere.” In contrast to the short, punchy posts favored by most bloggers, Greenwald offers a single daily essay of two thousand to three thousand words. In each, he draws on extensive research, amasses a daunting array of facts, and, as Boehlert puts it, builds his case “much like an attorney does.”
Second, Massing quite rightly acknowledges
… some of the more troubling features of the journalism taking shape on the Web. The polemical excesses for which the blogosphere is known remain real. In And Then There’s This, an impressionistic account of the viral culture on the Internet, Bill Wasik describes how “the network of political blogs, through a feedback loop among bloggers and readers,” has produced a machine that supplies the reader with “prefiltered information” supporting his or her own views. According to one study cited by Wasik, 85 percent of blog links were to other blogs of the same political inclination, “with almost no blog showing any particular respect for any blog on the other side.” …
Finally, the Internet remains a hothouse for rumors, distortions, and fabrications. … For all these problems, the Web is currently home to all kinds of intriguing experiments … [which t]aken together … suggest a fundamental change taking place in the world of news.
Massing’s piece offers insights into where this change has come from as well as tantalising glimpses of where it might be going. The key point is that, whilst the world of print journalism may not be dieing, it will need to rejuvenate if it is to thrive. How it responds to that challenge will be interesting. And remember, as it does, please embed those links!
Bonus links: the Review’s podcast page has a conversation between Manning and Charles Petersen about the rise of blogs and the ascent of online journalism (mp3); and while you’re there, check out Fintan O’Toole’s gripping interview by Sasha Weiss about the genius and misfortune of Flann O’Brien (mp3).
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 Marie McGonagle, NUI Galway, writes in today’s Irish Times that the judgment in Mahon Tribunal v Keena [2009] IESC 64 (31 July 2009) (also here (pdf)) copperfastens the right of journalists to protect sources (with added links):
… That decision, particularly as it emanates from a unanimous Supreme Court, must … mark a very significant stage in the development … of legal recognition of the right of journalists to protect their sources.
… Mr Justice Nial Fennelly … proceeded to consideration of the High Court judgment, with which he agreed in many respects. There is no doubt that the High Court judgment was valuable, particularly for its examination of the powers and interests of tribunals under the relevant legislation, and of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) Article 10 principles of freedom of expression, including protection of journalists’ sources. Indeed, the High Court accepted that “the non-disclosure of journalistic sources enjoys unquestioned acceptance in our jurisprudence and interference in this area can only happen where the requirements of Article 10(2) . . . are clearly met”. The principle, which had long been denied in Irish law, was, therefore, firmly established. The questionable aspect of the High Court’s decision was the actual balancing between the interests of the tribunal and the protection of sources. Read the rest of this entry »
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 For anyone who is as impatient as I am to find out what President McAleese has decided after her meeting this evening with the Council of State, the RTÉ News website is reporting:
The meeting of the Council of State called by the President ended at around 10pm. … The President has indicated she will announce her decisions tomorrow morning. …
Update (23 July 2009): Irish Independent | Irish Times here and here | Jason Walsh here and here | Slugger O’Toole.
And so we wait. Patiently?
Bonus link: meanwhile, the RTÉ news report has a link to the following story from a few weeks ago: OSCE argues against blasphemy law. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) press release to which that story refers is headed: OSCE media freedom representative welcomes Irish draft law decriminalizing libel, asks to drop ‘blasphemous libel’, and begins (with added links):
The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Miklos Haraszti, welcomed today the Irish Parliament’s final preparations to decriminalize defamation, but warned that the proposal to introduce a new article on ‘blasphemous libel’ risked jeopardizing OSCE media freedom commitments. …
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 As the slow march towards a new Supreme Court for the UK nears its destination, the Times has a piece about its newly refurbished premises:
The United Kingdom’s new Supreme Court will open its doors for business on October 1, with the first inbuilt facilities in Britain for broadcasting in court. … Broadcasting and internet arrangements are still to be devised but the three courts (two for the Supreme Court, one for the judicial committee of the Privy Council) can be filmed, a first in England and Wales.
As the BBC story on the completion of the refurbishment emphasises, the “decision to televise events from inside the court’s three chambers is a first for England and Wales”. And the Guardian quotes Jenny Rowe, the Court’s Chief Executive as saying that they are “in advanced discussions with broadcasters about the material they will want to use … If broadcasters wish to show it we will make it available”.
I think that it is a splendid idea. As the Canadian blawgs Slaw and the Court point out, since February 2009, the Supreme Court of Canada has provided live streaming of oral arguments and judges’ questions in authorized cases. The whole experiment is working well, and doing the same in the UK is an excellent development. When will the Irish Supreme Court follow suit? Will it ever catch on here? It can only help to promote public confidence in the administration of justice at the highest level. After all, not only would justice be done, it would be seen to be done.
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 - Jörges hands over the Charter to Reding (Photo: EUobserver)
On 25 May 25 2009, 48 editors-in-chief and leading journalists from 19 countries adopted and signed the European Charter on Freedom of the Press in Hamburg. In ten articles, the Charter formulates principles for the freedom of the press from government interference. Yesterday, the Charter was presented to the EU Commissioner for the Information Society and Media (hat tip: European Media Blog; see EU press relase).
From the EUobserver:
In an effort to counter increasing worries about infringement of press freedom by governments in Europe, both within the EU and beyond, the editor-in-chief of Germany’s weekly Stern magazine [Hans-Ulrich Jörges], together with EU media commissioner Viviane Reding on Tuesday (9 June) celebrated the launch of the European Charter on Freedom of the Press … In March, the Open Society Institute’s media programme – a pressure group focussing on media freedom in emerging democracies – criticised the European Commission in a report that argued that broadcasting across Europe, particularly in the east but also in Italy, is undergoing a “counter-reformation” – a backsliding towards overt political control after the post-Cold War period, when leaders relaxed their grip on TV and radio. … The European Commission came in for criticism for not holding new EU member states to account after promises concerning media freedom were made ahead of accession. …
The European Charter on Freedom of the Press provides: Read the rest of this entry »
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