Week 8 & 9 Flashcards
Accord and Satisfaction
Complaint signs waiver agreeing not to sue. In return publisher of defamatory statement publishes a correction and apology
Honest Opinion - 5 requirements
Can be used to defend opinion pieces and comment
5 requirements;
- The comment must be the honestly held opinion of the person writing it
- It must be recognisable to the consumer as opinion rather than fact
- Must be based on a provably true fact or privileged meaning
- The author must explicitly or implicitly indicate the fact or information on which it is based
- Statement must be recognisable as an opinion
It protects free speech and irony/comedy
Absolute privilege
Applies to court proceedings held in public
- Criminal
- Civil
- Coroners
- Tribunals
- ECHR
- Politicians speaking in parliament
Articles must be fair, accurate and published contemporaneously
Report both sides of the trial
Comments shouted in the public gallery are not covered if they are not ‘concerned in proceedings’
No privilege for comments on the steps outside
Leave and License
Used when an interviewee tells an interviewer something defamatory about themselves.
They must sign a written statement of the agreement that it can be published
Qualified Privilege
Protects non-contemporaneous court cases and certain types of information or statement
- Public meetings
- Press conferences
- Parliamentary debates
- Council meetings
- Lobby journalism from parliament
Copy must be fair, accurate, on a matter of public interest and without malice
Protects reports of actual proceedings not if what they say outside is defamatory
Qualified privilege Part 1
Statements published ‘without explanation or contradiciton’
Including;
- Government statements
- Public Inquiries
- High-level conferences
Qualified Privilege Part 2
Material issued by governments and government bodies in any EU member state
Including;
- Extracts from documents published by courts in EU states and the Court of Justice
- Proceedings of UK local councils; tribunals, commissions, inquiries
- Public meetings
- Information and reports from public companies
- Decisions made about information
- AGMs of limited companies
Section 1 of Defamation Act 1996, extended by section 10 of the 2013 Act
Provides a defence for media organisations publishing readers’ comments
Media websites cannot be sued for defamatory comments on their websites as long as they are not the author, editor or publisher of the statement
Organisations must prove they did not moderate/check the comment before it was published
The section 1 defence applies to live broadcasts too if someone is being interviewed and starts saying something defamatory you have got to take ‘reasonable care’ as soon as the interviewee starts being defamatory you’ve got to stop them
Section 5 defence
Provides defence for website operators who can show they did not post the relevant defamatory material
They must also pass on details of the poster to the potential claimant
May protect the website operator even if the material was ‘moderated’ provided procedure is followed
When Section 5 Defence fails
This defence fails if the website operator has received a notice of the complaint and has failed to respond within the specified time
Also fails if a claimant shows the website operator acted with malice in relation to the posting of the material
Regulation 19 of the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002
- EU law
- Provides a defence which protects a publisher who didn’t know a reader had posted defamatory material
- If they follow the Notice and Take Down procedure
- Also protects websites when a reader has posted a comment which has broken another law
