Supreme Court Justice Kennedy Teaches Wrong Lesson On Freedom Of The Press

from the except-for-when-it-comes-to-supreme-court-justices dept

You would think that a Supreme Court Justice (and the people who work for one) would know better than to tell any sort of news publication -- even a high school newspaper -- that he needed to approve any articles written about a speech he gave, but that appears to be exactly what happened with Justice Anthony Kennedy and a recent speech to Dalton High School students in Manhattan. The people who work for Kennedy are now trying to claim that this was just to make sure the quotes were accurate, but those who work for the school paper say they were under the impression they needed full approval of the article first. It's amazing that whoever made the request (whether Kennedy himself or some staffer) didn't realize how bad that would look, especially from a Justice who has always been a strong proponent of strong First Amendment rights...

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Freedom Of The Press? UK's The Guardian Barred From Reporting On Parliament

from the how-do-you-report-on-being-banned-from-reporting? dept

Over in the UK, the Guardian has apparently been barred from reporting on a certain action in Parliament (Update: read below). But how do you even report on being barred from reporting on a particular subject without reporting on it. Watch the linguistic gymnastics The Guardian goes through:

The Guardian has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights.

Today's published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented -- for the first time in memory -- from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations.

Yet another case of chilling effects in the form of lawyers suing over coverage they don't like. Of course, we're not barred from reporting on anything, and checking through some Parliament webpages turns up the following list of questions, including the following:

Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.

This certainly implies that The Guardian has been barred due to this original story of how British oil trader Trafigura was offering to pay "historic damages" to 31,000 people injured in the dumping of toxic waste in Africa.

Of course, my guess is that Trafigura and Carter-Ruck are about to learn about The Streisand Effect, and UK politicians are about to get another lesson on why its libel laws need to be fixed. In the meantime, in the absence of all of this, how many people would have heard about this whole Trafigura affair? How many more people are about to become aware of it?

Update: After this story got spread all over the internet (especially on Twitter), it looks like Carter-Ruck backed down. Of course... the end result? Much worse than if they had never tried to gag the newspapers. A lot more people are aware of the story. Why do lawyers still think banning such things will work?

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Judge Rules That Press Can Use Perp Walk Photos; Freedom Of The Press Lives

from the phew dept

Last month, we were troubled by the fact that a judge in NY was even considering barring local newspapers from using photos of a politician handcuffed in their news coverage about him. The judge was afraid it could bias a jury, but the newspapers pointed to that whole "freedom of the press" bit. Vince writes in to let us know that the judge has in fact allowed the press to use the photos, correctly noting that the First Amendment issue seems to outweigh the others. Still, it remains troubling that the question even lingered as long as it did, and that the judge needed to justify the decision with such precise details (including the idea that it was okay because NY is a large metro area, and because the time difference between the photos and the trial). It seems like it should be pretty straightforward that a court shouldn't be able to get involved in the editorial decisions of a newspaper, so long as what the newspaper is printing is truthful.

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Judge Apparently Thinks He Can Tell Newspaper Which Photos It Can Use

from the that-doesn't-seem-right... dept

Romenesko points us to the news that a judge is considering barring news organizations from showing photos of a handcuffed local legislator, Roger Corbin. Corbin was arrested on tax charges, and (not surprisingly), local news sources have shown photos of him in handcuffs. This seems both accurate and newsworthy. However, the judge seems to think that these photos could bias the jury, saying that it was "troubling" to him that the news organizations used the handcuffed photos rather than photos of Corbin back when he was an upstanding legislator. Of course, as the lawyer for the news organizations pointed out: "Courts do not get [into] telling the media what to publish." The judge then apparently compared the handcuff photos to child porn in explaining that the First Amendment wasn't absolute, and the gov't could restrain the use of certain photos (apparently skipping over the incredibly high barrier normally used to justify anything of that nature). The judge hasn't made a final decision yet, but even the fact that he's considering telling newspapers that they can't publish photos of a guy in handcuffs seems troubling.

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Singapore Fines The WSJ For Editorials It Considered Contempt Of Court

from the opinions-not-allowed dept

The Wall Street Journal is running a story about how it's been fined by Singaporean courts for two editorials the paper published over the summer. The story notes how nearly every foreign publication distributed in Singapore has been sued in court at one point or another, and the article goes through detailing the specific charges against it by Singapore. Obviously, the WSJ's story can be seen as biased since they were a party in the lawsuit, but from the description, it sounds like Singapore was upset that the WSJ accurately reported on a defamation lawsuit by a former government official against an opposition party candidate, and later a critical study by the International Bar Association on the rule of law in Singapore. It's difficult to see how those reports can be said to be "contemptuous of the judiciary," but in a country that isn't known for taking criticism well, perhaps it's not that surprising.

Still, what's most interesting is that in response to this, the Wall Street Journal has chosen not to publish this particular story about the decision in the Asian edition of the Wall Street Journal -- though, the story is obviously available online. Apparently the WSJ recognizes, probably accurately, that if they published the story about the decision, where they are somewhat critical of that decision, they would probably be in for yet another "contempt" charge. To some extent, this decision makes you wonder how effective suppression of the press can be going forward. Yes, countries can build filters and block out certain publications, but online content can always be filtered through eventually. The very fact that the WSJ is purposely leaving the editorial out of Asian editions of the paper seems more likely to draw more attention to the story from within Singapore as well, accomplishing exactly the opposite of what the country thinks it's doing in fining the paper.

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Judge Orders Newspaper Not To Report On Lawsuit Brought By The Newspaper

from the freedom-of-the-press...-except... dept

Romenesko points us to the news that a judge overseeing a lawsuit between the OC Register (the newspaper) and newspaper delivery workers has barred the newspaper from reporting on any testimony in the case. Of course, the newspaper reported on that ruling, and it also dug up a bunch of constitutional scholars, who pointed out the unconstitutionality of such a ban.

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