LIBEL GLOBALISATION Bend it like Beckham: UK injunction sunk by Euro papers

Libel law remains a generally hidden form of press regulation; along with privacy laws and the ever growing powers of police and security forces to ignore the once sacred press/journalist right to protect the identity of their sources, the law courts play a significant role.





Publication of hacked David Beckham emails renders injunction worthless: the Sunday Times printed a front page story telling their readers they had a celebrity scandal they were injuncted (blocked: thats what a media injunction is, a ban on sharing, publishing or repeating information) from revealing. It turns out this was on David Beckham, and they were soon able to report it once the story was widely published in France and elsewhere; globalisation, and the sharing of global media content through twitter and others, often undermines UK court injunctions.

LIBEL Mail faces $150m Trump suit

Read Guardian article here.

Another major example of the difficulty facing any NATIONAL regulator, and the limitations of any media regulator when the rich can always use law courts.

A suit has been filed in Maryland claiming an extraordinary $150m damages after a Mail article is claimed to have defamed Donald Trump's wife Melania.

Unlike the Gawker case this is not enough to bankrupt the Mail - but if they lose it surely will have a huge impact on the press in the UK and beyond.

Trump is using the same lawyer that successfully claimed huge damages in the Hulk Hogan case, seeing Gawker go bust.

This is something of a reverse from recent years when the UK was widely used for libel tourism as accusers were more likely to win than in their home country and also to gain much harsher punishments and publishing restrictions.

Trump has launched 100s of libel suits and legal cases - never forget that the sheer cost of defending these is a serious issue for many media outlets, who will be more reluctant to fulfil their democratic reporting function when it comes to Trump as a result.

IPSO, just like the PCC, has nothing to say on this - shouldn't it (with OfCom?) be a factor here?

See: Melania Trump sues Daily Mail for $150m over 'lies' about her past.

Music Video regulation: collected articles

I'll use this post to draw together links on this topic - use the tag and you'll find earlier posts on this, and I will be separately blogging more on this. Its a useful case study as it brings to the fore so many issues:

• Globalisation: UK regulation only to (compulsorily; likes of VEVO are volunteering theirs) apply to videos produced in UK?
• Digitisation: with YouTube's weak controls as just one example, do we really think this block digital t(w)eens from accessing these videos?!
• Politics and moral panic: this is a convenient, socially conservative issue on which the government can win favour from the right-wing press, just as was the case with the 80s 'video nasty' campaign
• Gender: is there a risk of penalising and continuing to render taboo female sexuality? OR is this an important corrective to the pornification of culture?
• Children: you can't decouple this from the digitisation and gender issues above. Should we be concerned that government gets to influence what is released/accessible in popular culture? Could such powers once granted spread beyond the initial, explicit intent? Is there research into effects to back up the need for this regulation?

ARTICLES FOR FURTHER READING:

DEREGULATION GLOBALISATION Robert Bork + why EU tackles Google monopoly when US doesn't

I was aware of Robert Bork, but couldn't have pinned down his relevance to the media (de)regulation issue before I'd read this excellent article by John Naughton, intriguing enough to interrupt a time out in the fading sunshine!

The news hook is that the EU have announced an investigation into Google's practices, giving them 10 weeks to respond to an accusation of monopolistic strategy. Naughton highlights the stark contrast with the US, where the FTC (Federal Trade Commission), faced with the same data as the EU's competition commissioner (the US actually passed it on!), decided not to take a case ... despite several staff apparently arguing they should.

This is where Naughton draws on the writings and influence of Robert Bork, one of the foremost theorists of the neoliberal, deregulatory ideology that has slowly gained hegemony since the New Right movements of Thatcherism and Reaganomics took hold in the early 1980s.

WEB 2.0 Failing to tackle Twitter trolls? Report on football racist tweets

Can the web be effectively regulated? The case of the tweeter jailed for racist comments aimed at footballer Fabrice Muamba became a famous case which seemed to suggest that, yes, the wild wild web was tameable, and Lord MacAlpine's successful legal pursuit of the 100s who incorrectly named him as a paedophile on Twitter seemed to reinforce that view.

How does this square with the report into football-related tweets that exposes tens of thousands of racist ('hate speech' in legal terms) tweets against individual footballers such as Mario Balotelli? David Conn, quoted below, notes the difficulty in UK police taking action when US-hosted sites such as twitter refuse to co-operate, and US courts also refuse to assist:

DIGITISATION OWNERSHIP Preston on online polls opposing non-dom owners

In short, [there] is no single, ideal model of press ownership anywhere in the world, particularly in an era of profound flux. Any prospective government policy is going to be out of date before it’s sealed: see the way Leveson couldn’t cope with online.

Preston raises an opinion poll that shows overwhelming support for tougher media regulation, specifically restricting the right of non-doms to own British media. Whilst acknowledging the principle behind this, he questions whether this sentiment has any meaning given the globalisation that digitisation has brought about.

He starts:

DIGITISATION GLOBALISATION Is Guardian now an AMERICAN paper?

Unique charitable ownership (Scott Trust) guarantees a future?

[UPDATE: Points from new article on Guardian linking up with several other media brands to jointly sell online display advertising added below the line]

This has been coming for some time, and reflects the globalising impact of ongoing digitisation. As well as highlighting investment in video content, American offices and ad sales staff to sell US-targeted ads (I already frequently see US ads within the Android Guardian app!), and detailing the wider corporate strategy, the central role of the US audience is made abundantly clear. We have to ask several questions here:

• Can a US/world-facing paper be properly regulated by UK media regulators?
• Lets not forget that the Guardian continues to boycott IPSO (at the time of writing)
• Does a separate press regulator make sense when convergence is essentially making the Guardian into an online TV producer as well as written/photographic news provider? Furthermore...
• Okay, the Guardian at a mere £1bn net worth is not on the scale of Murdoch et al, but nonetheless it does own other media interests - why is there still so little focus on cross-media ownership?
• Is it feasible that under pressure to please its US (and other nationalities) readers the Guardian won't shift its editorial style or approach on the US? Where might this leave British readers/users?
• Given the near-absence of any 'left-wing' within mainstream US politics, could this signal a further threat to pluralism within the UK press market?
• There are more positive issues too - the Guardian has built up a considerable record in recent years of collaborating on major, expensive projects with French, German, American and other papers, and this could enhance the prospects for more of this. Globalisation meant that the UK government's rather clumsy attempts to silence the Snowden reportage (physically smashing a Guardian PC received widespread mockery and contempt) was doomed to failure.

Make particular note of the 2nd paragraph below [article in full]:

CENSORSHIP Should terror videos be banned?

This is a question which ultimately leaches into many areas of the debate around media regulation:

• does it matter if effects cannot be proven? The BBFC explicitly justify their work by arguing that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"
• given that publicity is what such terror organisations as Isis are seeking, should the media self-censor ...
• ... or be forced to censor the graphic videos that are causing worldwide headlines and making this organisation a global brand?
• Should OfCom have the power to block (or censure/fine) non-UK media that enable this content over here? Fox News (USA) has caused ripples by re-posting a full, unedited video of a murder ... and this link has been widely passed around and promoted by Isis supporters
• UK newspapers have embedded extreme
• Mrs Thatcher memorably used the phrase "oxygen of publicity" to describe what terrorists desired - her solution, when TV regulators (both the IBA, soon scrapped, and the BBC: Death on the Rock and Real Lives rows) refused to bow to enormous pressure (a typical moral panic whipped up by her press supporters), was to ban 'extremists' from being heard on TV/radio
• media resistance to this led to John Major quietly repealing the law ... will we see a similar approach in 2015 and beyond as clamour grows now for similar action to banish Islamic extermists from the 'airwaves'?

I'll post further links; for now: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/feb/04/fox-news-shows-isis-video-jordan-pilot.

John Pilger on media global ideology

Ill post more on this when not using iPad... http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/29/australia-murdochracy-rupert-part-problem