BS: Parliament -v- Press and vice versa (UK)

Subject: RE: BS: Parliament -v- Press and vice versa (UK)
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 25 Feb 10 - 05:25 PM

Ah well. Nothing fails like apathy.

Subject: RE: BS: Parliament -v- Press and vice versa (UK)
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 25 Feb 10 - 08:35 AM

Hmm, no bugger thinks this important. I think its about as big as the smashing of the US democratic system by corporate money and big lobbying.

And organised religion slaughtering Bambi (UK political nickname for Harriet Harman).

Subject: RE: BS: Parliament -v- Press and vice versa (UK)
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 24 Feb 10 - 10:33 AM

More - including reactions. Note the reference to New Labour kowtowing to Murdoch for years

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2010/feb/24/news-of-the-world-phone-hacking-select-commitee

Subject: RE: BS: Parliament -v- Press and vice versa (UK)
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 24 Feb 10 - 10:28 AM

Headline: -

"MPs' verdict on News of the World phone-hacking scandal: Amnesia, obfuscation and hush money

• News of the World hacked phones 'on industrial scale'
• Scotland Yard and press body failed properly to investigate
• Report rejects executives' lone 'rogue reporter' defence"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/feb/24/phone-hacking-scandal-mps-report

Subject: BS: Parliament -v- Press and vice versa (UK)
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 24 Feb 10 - 10:25 AM

I see that an all-party committee chaired by a conservative has administered a verbal kicking to the Murdoch paper the News of the World and also to the toothless tiger the Press Commission, and Murdoch has attacked the committee process. This could line up to be a right humdinger on the power of press bias to influence elections.

There are also suggestions of reform to UK libel law, but IMHO any decrease in the power of UK courts to hear disputes on libels hosted on foreign servers would at the least need to be balanced by an obligation, an automatic obligation, on the server operators to disclose the identity of those posting material there, as otherwise (for example) those libelled by the BNP on Facebook are unable to confront their superficially anonymous defamers without first having to litigate against longpockets Facebook. Those in the public eye would be effectively subjected to the ludicrous US "actual malice" rule, and US law would come to colonialise UK law because most servers are in the USA (although China and the old SovBloc are rising fast). Similarly it seems to me that a "first publication" rule for limitation periods would be quite wrong, since harm flows from each publication.