Wednesday 9 May 2012

Libel Law Reform

If the current judicially imposed arrangement on privacy were enacted into the statute law, but with the burden of proof in libel actions placed on the plaintiff, then who could object to that? And why?

Making the privacy law statutory as the price of reversing the burden of proof in libel actions. That would be the deal. The corporate media cannot expect their own way all the time.

As for freedom of information, repeal the Official Secrets Acts. Just do it.

3 comments:

  1. I am thinking of a man sacked from one editorial position, at a paper that has acquired a new lease of life since it got rid of him, and well on the way to being sacked from another editorial position, at a website that has slipped into a kind of coma above the line under him and become so much a voice of the BNP and EDL below the line that it cannot allow comments on the Rochdale case.

    You regularly make yourself a hero to all good hacks and all good Catholics by wishing death or whatever on him. But he has repeatedly threatened you with a libel action. He has never followed through and he never will. We all know why not.

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  2. Mabel is right, the Herald has increased by leaps and bounds since Thompson was sacked for bragging on his Telegraph blogs that all Fleet Street always knew about his late Herald employee Kit Cunningham, but what the hell?

    You recently used the Herald site to demand his excommunication and received no rebuke from anyone. Not the Editor and sometime Thompson protégé Luke Coppen. Not the blogger on whom you were commenting, William Oddie. Not any other reader. Nobody.

    What Mabel says about the condition of Telegraph blogs is true as well. Readers are desperate for a new Editor. Apart from the BNP/EDL ones, obviously. Then again, are there any others left? I am not the only person who thinks your comments below the line are now among the best things on it and a million times better than dozens of actual posts.

    How many times has Thompson threatened to sue you? Six? Seven? Eight? He never will, he knows what would "come out" in court. You would have thought that nothing could make him even more ridiculous than he already was, but by some miracle he has managed it.

    Imagine the reaction on the few remaining American traditionalist Catholic sites that still believe his hype. Worse than homosexuality, his lack of doctrinal orthodoxy or the slightest theological training might also attract some scrutiny.

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