Defamation & Libel 2.0

As part of recapping the lawful aspect of my youth, i.e. two years ago, we had a lecture discussing defamation and what it means for us (journalists).

For my point of view, which is to say a broadcast angle of the news. What you broadcast about someone is defamatory if it tends to (the wording is important here as, should a defamation case come to court, the level of proof only has to show that a statement 'tends' to do be defamatory. There's no "beyond all reasonable doubt" here):

• Lower them in the estimation of right-thinking people -This is fairly self explanatory, if a normal person hears what you've said and thinks: "I now think less of the person who is subject of that report" then you have defamed the subject;

• Cause the person to be shunned or avoided - Once again, this should need little explanation. If someone is not generally shunned or avoided, and following what you broadcast, they become so, you have defamed them;

• Disparage the person in his/her business, trade, office, or profession - This would happen if you were to broadcast that your subject was terrible at their job, or was an unreliable person;

And finally,

•  Expose the person to hatred, ridicule, or contempt -Let's use an extreme example here and say you've called someone a paedophile. I think it's safe to assume that will expose them to plenty of hatred, not to mention contempt and ridicule.

With film, it can be easy to accidentally defame a person or company if you are not careful with your shots. Often, juxtaposition of a shot, with another, or coupled with a voice over, can end up with what can be (and often will be) perceived as defamation.

Let's say you are making a package about dodgy retailers (or some such thing), and you have cut-aways of a high street with shop signs visible. You have potentially defamed these shops by implying that they are dodgy retailers (or some such thing).

An obvious thing to help prevent accidental defamation is to ensure that, when filming, you film the correct building that your story concerns; as well as this make sure you name the correct people involved in your story. in many cases, you can't have too much identification i.e: Name, age, occupation, where they live; above all: a picture! (just make sure it's definitely the right person!) This is especially true of court reporting, you don't want to risk someone else having the same name/ job etc as the person you're reporting on.

An important point to make about defamation is that you cannot defame someone who is dead. I'm not saying go nuts with it, but it is allowed. As a current example, look at what's going on with Jimmy Savile at the moment. Technically, calling him a paedophile now, is not defaming him as he's dead. Doing it when he was alive, would have been.

Now defamation is hugely important in libel. For something to be libellous, it must meet three criteria:

• It must have been published
• It must have been defamatory
• The subject must have been identified

Luckily, us journalists have defences against libel suits, the main of these being:

• Justification - It's true and you can prove it.
• Fair comment - Honestly held opinion based upon facts or privileged material
• Privilege - Protection for journalists in court reporting.

Other defences include:

• Bane and antidote - This is when the defamatory statement etc. is somehow shown not to be defamatory with context. The precedent for this was set in 1835 when a judge said that if in one part of a publication something disreputable to the claimant was stated that was removed by the conclusion, 'the bane and antidote must be taken together'.
•  Apologies and clarifications - These must usually be made contemporaneously.
• Reynold's Defence - A series of points journalists must follow, to obtain common law qualified privilege. A full description of the points can be found here (scroll about halfway down to find them.

 I have written blog posts in previous years describing some of the defences and cases supporting them here:

• Privilege - A Defence Against Popes and Pussycats
• The Simple Sword of Truth, and the Trusty Barge Pole of Cowardice
   

The easiest way to avoid being sued is to go through a checklist in your head. Perhaps most obviously: 

• Who am I writing about, and are they very litigious?
• Is what I'm writing about potentially defamatory? - If so, ask your superiors (essentially pass the buck) or lawyers. You should always be scared of being defamatory, unless your defence is absolutely airtight.

Some fairly recent defamation cases worth at least googling include: Chris Jefferies and his treatment by newspapers during the Joanna Yates murder investigation; Charlotte Church; and Sussex tutor Luke Cooper.

Stay tuned for more posts on media law in coming weeks. 

Copyright 3.0: Fair Dealing Strikes Back!

Firstly, I feel that I should explain that as part of my Journalism course at the University of Winchester, we are required to take two modules in media law. The first, in our first year of university, to give us a grasp of what not to do as beginner journalists. The second module starts in our third (and current) year, and is designed to bring us up to speed on any recent changes in the law, or any cases relevant to our interests. Most noticeably at the moment is the Leveson inquiry, which will almost certainly have a major impact on our working careers.

To bring you up to speed, last week we had a lecture on copyright by Peter Hodges essentially a dos and don'ts for journalists. Mr Hodges gave a similar lecture during my first year which I wrote about here, so I wont go into too much detail on the basics on this post. Instead I'm going to talk about fair dealing which is a very important thing to get around, and very useful if you know how to use it.

Fair dealing as described by McNae's essential law for journalists can be used 'for the purpose of reporting current events. essentially  meaning that it is OK to use a small amount of copyrighted material if a news story needs it to help explain something. It should always bring something to the story, however, and does not count as fair dealing if it is simple there to bulk out a piece. Fair dealing can always be used for the purposes of criticism and review. This means that if you were reviewing a movie, a video game, or a piece of music; you are allowed to use  a small amount of the copyrighted material. How much you are allowed to use isn't clear in the law, and it's easy to be put off by uncertainty, but this was something I expressed to Mr Hodges, who, as the former head of BBC Copyright should have a very good idea on what is acceptable.

He said that for the purposes of criticism and review, you can use an aggregate of two minutes for each subject. the clips can be long or short, but no more than two minutes.

Below is a short review show written and edited by yours truly. We showed this to Peter Hodges and he said it was absolutely safe in terms of fair dealing. It had no more than two minutes of footage for each game, and the details of the copyright holders are clearly displayed throughout. Essentially, this is what you have to do to be able to use copyrighted footage:



You'll have to excuse the dodgy puns and crappy audio mixing. It was my first attempt at something like this and if it makes you fell better, I cringe everytime I watch it. Think of it this way: visually and aurally, this is a bit of a train wreck; But as far as the letter of the law goes, this is excellent. Some other quick points that were covered in the lecture: When filming live events, you are not at fault if copyrighted music is audible as this is accidental inclusion; if however you then recorded the copyrighted material in a package, you could be in trouble. this can prove tricky when filming live events such as sports games and will definitely have to be thought about when editing.

Also, everything said about fair dealing above, does not ring true for photographs. You must always have the copyright holder's permission to use any photo. for example, do you see any pictures in this blog post?

No, you don't.

Fresher Life - My First Package.

Last week, as part of my transformation into something approaching a journalist, I went out and made my first package. It took far too long, and suffered at the hands of my apparent inability to edit in a short space of time. Nevertheless, it was finished, and here it the written version for you perusal:

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Freshers’ Fortnight. A hectic affair in which new students begin their university experience in a new city, in a new house, with new people. It’s a whole new chapter of their life unfolding before them. No more parents to take care of them, and complete independence is a must. What could go wrong?

We set off one bright afternoon with one goal in mind: seek out freshers, and quiz them on their university life. However, finding freshers turns out to be more difficult than anticipated. Two house were too busy celebrating 21st birthdays to talk to some purple-haired, second-year journo, rocking up with a camera bag and a tripod expecting some goofy stories. We were also spurned by more houses, who were either “too timid” to be interviewed, or otherwise occupied with taking one of their housemates to hospital (Now that would have been the right kind of interview).

Eventually, we found a fresher willing to be subjected to interrogation. Dayo Hammed, a student from Nigeria led us into a remarkable clean, if somewhat bare, kitchen (understandable as it takes more than a fortnight to build up a respectable collection of group photos and/or pictures of models with which to adorn the walls). At present, there are only two decorations, souvenirs of the freshers fayre, one befitting any respectable student house “Drink vodka and get drunk.” Standard fare, really. After an awkward few minutes trying to set up the camera. We set to asking our carefully chosen questions about money, food, and what’s been going on. He tells us that university is his first experience of being truly independent. As an international student, it’s fair to say that Dayo is a little more out of his element than most people starting further education, and that although he hasn’t had much chance to go out, he is very much enjoying the experience.

We say goodbye to Dayo and carry on our search for the (apparently) elusive fresher. After being refused two more times our luck begins to pick up. The more people we talk to, the more trends begin to emerge. Many of our freshers, it seems, have yet to fully appreciate a true university shopping experience. A hefty majority are surviving on care packages from parents and many have yet to even do any washing. One fresher, Tess Buckley said that her biggest worry was that her washing would come out either bright pink, or ridiculously small. I can relate to washing procrastination, as, when a wash can cost you upwards of four quid, you tend to get into the habit of wearing certain items inside out. And back to front. And deodorant starts becoming your best friend. All in all, there is great motivation to try and last as long as possible, even to the point of going home to get it done. For some however this is not much of an option. Melodie Hornsby-King, although English by birth, lives in Spain during the holidays, and so, will find it difficult to visit, other than at the term breaks.

Homesickness does tend to take its toll on the fresher population. Ali Izatt said that: "If at home, you want to talk to someone, you can, here you can't do that, it's like: I want my mum!" She did say that since she had her boyfriend with her at Winchester, it does make everything, much easier to deal with.

Verdict. Despite all the issues that university life throws at them, our freshers are taking the bull by the horns, and seem determined to see it to the end.

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Thank you very much, reader, for seeing this through to the end as well. A post will shortly be up with the actual film. Until then, why not check out www.winol.co.uk for more work from my course at the University of Winchester.

"Regardless of content, quality, or sanity..."

Continuing a week or two of ever-changing blog-content (my apologies but at the end of the day, my course trumps the asinine rants that come vomiting out of the gap between my ears). Today I thought I’d actually talk about this blog. Now, those of you who have visited before will know that in September, I started a journalism course at the University of Winchester (for all you latecomers, consider this an introduction). One of the first things we were asked to do was create our own blog, which were to use as a means of publishing course notes and generally as a means of practicing our writing skills. For the first semester I was pretty religious about posting lecture notes and the like, but (me being a lazy little meerkat) I did virtually nothing towards the extra-curricular side.

After our Christmas break however, that changed. During a lecture about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) - this would be relatively difficult to explain, however, one of my course mates has written a blog about the basics which you can read here - our lecturers decided to make the blogs a competition. Now if anything was going to light a fire under my arse, it was learning that I was below the middle of the pack. And so, SuperEwan was born! Dedicated to producing blogs, regardless of content, quality, or sanity. So,  it’s been about six weeks since that fateful day. And I’ve shown, to quote my lecturer: “dramatic improvement.” I’ve moved up the rankings to fourth place, and I’m just about to reach my end-of-semester goal of breaking the three million mark.

I feel I should digress slightly at this point, to explain how the blogs are actually ranked. Well it’s quite simple actually, as long as you use Mozilla Firefox as your web browser you can download the ‘SEO Status PageRank/Alexa Toolbar’ (bit of a mouthful I know).  This gives you a toolbar that ranks web pages. At time of writing this post I am ranked at 3,060,580. It doesn’t sound great but for a blog that’s only been alive for a few months I’m relatively happy.

So, you know, if you felt like telling a few of your friends (or depending what you think of my blog, a few of your most hated enemies) about this little asylum of mine, and help me to become King of the Internet.

Much obliged.