Posts by Rich of Observationz
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Hard News: The judge is not helping, in reply to alobar,
Well, if he wants to provide an affadavit to that effect in an appeal? I can hear the creaking of the prison door now..
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Hard News: The judge is not helping, in reply to DexterX,
It's "news media" not "New Media". An important difference.
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What's an "enclosed yard"? You suggested previously it was mostly an industrial premise or building site, rather than a residential garden?
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Hard News: The judge is not helping, in reply to Russell Brown,
The court could expect an affadavit (or verbal evidence) that the "journalist" was not receiving financial inducements to make the statements in question.
They could lie, of course. If found out, then it becomes perjury, and they'd wind up in jail for quite a long time. (This happened, in reverse, to Jonathan Aitken and Jeffrey Archer who lied / procured others to lie in evidence in libel cases they had brought).
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I think journalists who consistently fabricate stories get exiled to the Press Gallery, where they can invent leadership contenders to their hearts content: Shane Jones / David Hay, etc.
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Hard News: The judge is not helping, in reply to Ben McNicoll,
Name suppression is an offence based on publication of a suppressed name.
Protection of sources applies to journalism in news media.
The concepts are not identical - publication is making content available to the public, and Slater was convicted of violating name suppression for publishing the identity of rape victims on his blog. ISTR his failed defence was that the blog was a private communication rather than a publication.
Journalism is a subset of publication.
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I'm getting the impression from comments elsewhere that this litigation concerns a business dispute where Slater weighed in on the side of one of the parties and received benefits in the form of overseas entertainment for his "work".
If true, then that isn't journalism.
It would be reasonable for Slater to, as part of any claim for journalistic privilege, deny these facts. If they later turned out true, he'd be in deep shit, however - the case of Jonathan Aitken comes to mind.
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Hard News: The judge is not helping, in reply to BenWilson,
I think this is the same in NZ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_defamation_law#Burden_of_proof_on_the_defendant but a lawyer will no doubt clarify [and one did, cheers Scott]
I would think that also, if one is defending a libel action based on the defense of truthfulness, one would be unlikely to win unless the sources who provided the information were willing to testify.
This will probably become more relevant if the HDC Bill is enacted - introducing "libel-lite" where cases can be pursued without a filing fee.
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media are likely to fare better in the hands of companies which actually want to make media
I can think of only two organisations in the semi commercial old media space* to which that applies - the Scott Trust and the BBC (and the latter comes under frequent, well-documented pressure to promote the interests of the UK government).
For all the others, their motivation is around making money, propagating a political line, or a synergistic combination of both. (As in Murdoch's UK media interests - corrupting politicians to enable his papers to behave as they wish and thence corrupt more politicians).
* Obviously you have Wikipedia and others outside that traditional space.
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“the reality of self-publishing is that the same individual or blog might be news media one day and just an arsehole the next.”
Maybe make the test of journalism apply to the article in question, not to the writer or publication's body of work?