Category: Seminars, interviews & commentary

As “libel tourism” burgeons in Britain, the State of New York is set to protect its writers and journalists from such action via the Libel Terrorism Protection Act. Michael Cameron reports from the Big Apple on what this means for free speech and America’s “war on terror” ... more

Stephen Collins, former head of ABC legal, now at Channel 4 in London, reviews the recent Privy Council decision in Seaga v Harper and comes to a startling conclusion: this expansion of Reynolds qualified privilege amounts to a restriction of free speech ... more

Peter Applegarth SC examines the state of the so-called “media safe harbour” in light of several recent decisions; one from the NSW Court of Appeal and two from the Federal Court. The protection afforded by section 65A of the Trade Practices Act may turn out to be deeply shallow ... more

Michaela Whitbourn takes a long, hard look at the development of “business defamation” and concludes that while it may be a boon for business, it has no basis in the common law ... more

Patrick George (pic) Kennedys partner and the author of Defamation Law in Australia, interrogates the latest tome on the subject, Reputation and Defamation by former Sydney academic Lawrence McNamara ... more

Some 190 media lawyers from the US, UK, Australia, Asia and Europe, gathered for two days of intense discussion and debate at London’s historic Stationers’ Hall, as part of the Media Law Resource Centre’s annual conference. Topics ranged from privacy to protection of sources and the high price of the freedom of the press ... more

Journalists and artists overreacted to the government’s sedition laws, according to the Australian Law Reform Commission’s David Weisbrot. In fact, the legislation was a considerable improvement on the old version of sedition. Even so, the ALRC would like to see greater protections for freedom of expression ... more

New Defamation Act “overwhelmingly favourable” to defendants, but more contentious is the future of private lives. Thank heavens there’ll still be plenty of “interlocutory disturbances” ... more

Veteran Queensland lawyer Doug Spence adds his voice to the call to stop the adoption of NSW’s version of statutory qualified privilege in the proposed Uniform Defamation Act. That law would not have accomodated much of the reporting that lead to the Fitzgerald inquiry or the “Dr Death” commission ... more

David Levine QC reviews Deborah Lipstadt’s account of the defamation case brought against her and Penguin Books by the Holocaust denier David Irving. This is one of the great defamation trials of modern history, made all the memorable by the masterly destruction of the plaintiff ... more

Why are the states and territories persisting with dragging NSW’s useless version of statutory qualified privilege into the uniform Defamation Act? Peter Applegarth SC argues that the qualified privilege defence drafted by Sir Samuel Griffith in 1889 is a far more effective mechanism for media defendants and other participants in public affairs ... more

David Levine gives a wide ranging interview to the Gazette of Law & Journalism. After nine years running the NSW Supreme Court defamation list he has some fascinating insights into the way plaintiffs and media defendants play the game. He talks of his most enjoyable and most dificult cases and the natural “predisposition” of judges to lean towards plaintiffs who take on large media corporations. He thinks corporations should be able to sue and the dead shouldn’t. And he believes there’s something in the public figure defence as it has developed in the US ... more