| Human Rights Act has given media freer reign Position1 #2721 Human rights legislation has made it harder for aggrieved parties to seek remedies for inaccurate, libellous reporting. |
Claim made by Campbell Deane in The Scotsman: "Blair talks of newspapers needing to break stories because of the saturation of 24-hour news coverage. There is a strong hint from him that accuracy is of secondary importance to the sting of the story: a sort of never-let-the-facts-get-in-the-way approach. But what he fails to consider, other than a side-swipe at the Press Complaints Commission, is that if there are failings on the part of the media, there must be remedies to those aggrieved - and indeed there are. The problem is those remedies are becoming more diluted.
More than that, those remedies - as a result of legislation that Blair's administration introduced through the Human Rights Act - are weighted in favour of the press and interpreted in that way by the courts. The introduction of such principles in the libel courts as Reynolds privilege, when it doesn't really matter that the media got it wrong provided they got it wrong acting responsibly, is a prime example of weighting the law against the wronged party.
Likewise fair comment just about covers everything nowadays. As long as the journalist had it in mind that he was thinking about a particular wrong-doing at the time the article was written, even although he doesn't mention that wrong-doing, then he has a defence to the action.
Likewise, the principles of a public interest defence have been stretched so far that they now include idle tittle-tattle and gossip from the tabloids. In short, anything that interests the public. " |