Lorna Woods: Advertising Standards Authority and the Internet

By Professor Lorna Woods

There has been lots of discussion about press regulation and self regulation of late, with the PCC clearly in need of reform [see Leveson recommendations].  There are still voices arguing that self-regulation can work and often the ASA/CAP system is paraded of one such system of self-regulation that works. Certainly, the ASA is an effective organisation, but it is questionable whether it is true self-regulation. It works on the basis that the ASA sanctions have bite as its various members will restrict advertisers’ access to advertising space when advertisers do not comply with the code.  It has a further backstop: the ASA may refer matters to the OFT under the Consumer Protection Regulations or the Business Protection Regulations.  To date, reliance on the backstop powers of the OFT has been very much the exception.  Are things changing, however?

Looking at the decisions of the ASA, a sub strand of cases is appearing. Many of the complained of advertisements appeared on the internet, including quite a number on companies’ own websites.  This raises questions about the ASA (co) regulatory system.  It has been very successful to date, but it has been based on an industry that had effectively a small audience, the media outlets and advertising agencies acting to a large degree as a funnel for the regulatory process, being a relatively small group that allowed ASA rules and rulings to reach out to the advertisers more generally.  Essentially, this was a professional audience.  That has changed: the internet has increased the number of outlets available and introduced the age of the amateur.

Upcoming talk, 28 November, University of Southhampton – Scandal Without End: Sir Jimmy Savile, child sexual abuse and the BBC crisis

Upcoming event: Scandal Without End: Sir Jimmy Savile, Child Sexual Abuse and the BBC Crisis

Where and when: Wednesday 28th November at 4pm,Institute of Criminal Justice Research, University of Southampton. Building 4, Law School. Room 4005 Highfield Campus. Light Refreshments will be available. 

Speakers: Chris Greer and Eugene McLaughlin.

On 3 October 2012 a heavily trailed ITV documentary branded Sir Jimmy Savile as a manipulative sexual predator. The resulting scandal around ‘Savile-as-child-abuser’ destroyed Savile’s ‘cultural icon’ status and implicated multiple institutions on charges of facilitation, failure and denial. The intensification of the scandal has to date resulted in the establishment of police investigations into hundreds of sexual abuse allegations, arrests, official inquiries, vigilante activities and the resignation of the Director General of the BBC. In this paper we trace the origins and development of the ‘Savile-as-child abuser’ scandal, and apply the ‘scandal amplification spiral’ (Greer and McLaughlin, 2012) to make sense of how, why and with what consequences the affair has escalated into a full blown institutional crisis for the BBC.

• Flyer [PDF]
• Chris Greer is co-director of the Centre of Law, Justice and Journalism, City University London
• Eugene McLaughlin is Professor of Criminology, University of Southampton

Professor Lorna Woods: Freedom of Expression and the Internet

Professor Lorna Woods, Associate Dean for Research and Professor of Law, City University Law School, gave a talk at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALs) on 14 November 2012, which discussed ‘Freedom of the Expression and the Internet’.

Her slides are available below:

Cybercrime and the culture of fear

Cybercrime, the culture of fear and internet ‘myths versus realities’ were the themes of a seminar given by Professor David Wall, Professor of Criminology, Durham University, at the Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism last week.

It was apt then, to hear Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), research fellow Jennifer Cole on the Radio 4 Today programme this morning emphasising that the Institute’s conference would not be about “cyber warfare” [08:45 am], but “strategic alliances in cyberspace”.  It will look at political and economic relationships with other nations and states and whether these differ in the cyber domain from the ‘real world’, she said. She is to chair a discussion on international cyber co-operation for the 21st century at the RUSI conference, 14-15 November.

In his seminar Wall had argued that the roots of cybercrime are cultural rather than scientific, and shape the way that we view and react societally to online deviance. It is, he says, important to understand this relationship because it frames legal and policy responses to cybercrime.

Links:

• Wall, D.S. (2007). Cybercrime: The transformation of crime in the information age. Cambridge: Polity.
• David Wall profile

Posted by: Judith Townend

Oliver O’Callaghan: Royalty, Nudity, Privacy, and Profitability

The recent publication of topless pictures of The Duchess of Cambridge
in a French magazine, following so closely after the exposure of Prince
Harry’s nocturnal activities in Las Vegas, has returned the issue of the
private lives of public figures to the forefront of the news once
again. Coming as Lord Justice Leveson prepares his report arising from
the eponymous inquiry, there are a number unresolved debates relating to
the publication of private information about celebrities or public
figures such as the royal family.

Read full post on the Inforrm blog…

Oliver O’Callaghan is a PhD researcher in Press Freedom and Privacy at the Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism, City University London

New working papers launched: ‘Justice Wide Open’

New publication calls for an increasingly open and digitised approach to open justice

The real “democratic deficit” in the courts is about limited public access not “unelected judges“, Adam Wagner, a barrister at One Crown Office Row, argued on the UK Human Rights Blog at the weekend, challenging a recent political and media narrative.

In his view, the internet age necessitates “a completely new understanding of the old adage ‘Not only must Justice be done; it must also be seen to be done‘”.

Wagner is one of 14 authors who contributed to a new working publication entitled ‘Justice Wide Open’, produced by the Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism (CLJJ), City University London, following an event on February 29 2012. The individual chapters can be accessed electronically.

The new collection of working papers is part of a wider project encouraging ‘Open Justice in the Digital Era‘. The issues are extensive and diverse: the recommendations of the government’s ‘secret justice’ green paper, now the Justice & Security bill, which would see more cases behind closed doors; the decline in local and national court reporting as a result of cuts in journalism; the courts’ barriers to entry due to ill-informed staff; and the difficulties in obtaining free legal information.

New publication: ‘Trial by Media: Phone-hacking, Riots, Looting, Gangs and Police Chiefs’

Chris Greer and Eugene McLaughlin

Contemporary police chiefs must operate within an information-communications environment that differs radically from the more stable and predictable conditions conceptualised in previous research. The most important dimension of this multi-faceted environment is the emergence of the 24-7 news mediasphere. This paper examines the changing nature of news media-police chief relations, and the rising news media ‘politics of outrage’, by analysing the ‘trial by media’ that defined Sir Hugh Orde’s attempt to become Commissioner of the MPS in August/September 2011.

Greer, C. and McLaughlin, E. (2012) ‘Trial by Media: Phone-hacking, Riots, Looting, Gangs and Police Chiefs’, in J. Peay and T. Newburn (eds.) Policing, Politics, Culture and Control: Essays in Honour of Robert Reiner (Festschrift), London: Hart.

This paper was presented to the Crime, Justice and Society Research Group at City Law School on 30 May 2012.

Upcoming event: Historicising the UK phone hacking scandal – Colin Agur

City Media Network and Sociology Department PhD students seminar series invite you to:

Historicising the UK phone hacking scandal: the origins of wiretapping and early cases in the United States and Britain with Colin Agur (Columbia University, Graduate School of Journalism)

• Tuesday 3 July, 2012, 16:00PM

• Room D318, Social Sciences Building, City University London, Northampton Square, London, EC1 OHB

The ongoing revelations of widespread phone hacking by NewsCorp raise questions about journalistic ethics and how effectively governments can protect privacy in a world of mass mobile phone usage. To understand the significance of the current scandal, we can look to the origins of wiretapping: the relationship between the telephone and recording technology dates back to their nearly simultaneous releases in the 1870s. Since then, as technologies have improved, wiretapping has became a favored tool in police investigations on both sides of the Atlantic, and the subject for several scandals. This talk explores the roles different parties (bootleggers, bookies, police, journalists) have played in the growth and sophistication of telephone surveillance. It contextualises the current UK scandal, showing how a tactic developed by and for police has been put to use by powerful corporate actors.

George Brock: Leveson – how to avoid the pitfalls of “better mousetrap” press regulation

Professor George Brock

Towards the end of next month, the Leveson Inquiry into the British press will turn from its current, revelatory phase about media relationships with politicians and address again the knotty question of regulating journalism.

The inquiry’s most basic dilemma hasn’t changed: how to prevent and discourage the wrongs which have occurred without tipping over into state control of the news media.

When he has grown bored and irritated with an editor waffling vaguely about how things will be improved by a few light adjustments to the present rules, Lord Justice Leveson usually asks one of two questions and sometimes both: what would you actually do?

Will what you suggest command public confidence? Next month will bring forth a slew of ideas for regulation designed to work better than the much-abused self-regulation of the past. Legal and media experts are busy putting the finishing touches to better mousetraps.

Read the post in full on George Brock’s blog here.

Court reporting in Germany

By Professor Lorna Woods

Of recent months, the issue of restrictions on the reporting of details in court cases has been the subject of some debate in the UK, with issues ranging from TV cameras in court through to anonymity and even super injunctions.

The UK is not alone in needing to balance the conflicting interests of public justice and freedom of expression on the one hand and other interests in the fair administration of justice and individuals’ reputational and privacy rights on the other.

This issue has come before the German courts recently in respect of a rape case involving a celebrity, in which sexual practices read out in court were then reported by a media publisher and a website operator.

The court upheld the celebrity’s claim for an injunction on the basis that, in the balancing act between freedom of expression and privacy, the reporting on the case was salacious; the sexual details reported had little connection with the alleged crime.

It is the focus on the sexual details unconnected with public interest in knowing about the crime or judicial proceedings that seem to have been fatal to the freedom of expression claim.  It seems, however, that the German appeal court distinguished the revelation of facts in court, where the numbers of people attending and hearing the evidence are limited, to the unlimited exposure in the media.

On this basis, the court held that public court proceedings did not give the press the right to report on everything that was said in court.  This distinction is unlikely to be workable in an environment where there are cameras in court, specifically if there is live broadcast.

For a more detailed note (in English) of the cases, see: the Merlin newsletter, IRIS 2012-4:1/17