Media Law videos on UK courts - useful for journalism students

The news that Supreme Court Judgements are now available on youtube led me to revisit the video of the UK's first ever televised sentencing.  

But it also had me thinking about some of the videos around the web that might be of use to journalism students who want to understand the basics about how the court system works. So here are a few quick links:

Criminal courts:

• 4min video on who’s who in magistrates’ court  from the University of Derby
• Ministry of justice video aimed at new jurors, but has good basic info about how courts work at 4mins.15 and from 7mins.45 to 11mins.45
• What types of sentence can offenders get? Video lasts 1.38. By The Sentencing Council.
• The You be the judge site has a reasonable explanation of a criminal case at crown court in case on burglary. But there are others to choose from.
• What the CPS does and what happens in court  Viewers might want to watch a short clip  from the middle of this video.

Civil cases:

• A 2.5 minute Minustry of Justice video on what happens when a county court hearing takes place in court… 
• …and one on hearings in chambers

Plus some nice old BBC newsreel-type footage on the famous Liberace libel case

Where have you been?

The calm before the course: training room in New Jersey

Oops. Long time, no JLB post. You see, I've been a bit busy.  Doesn't sound like a great excuse but, honestly, June was a hectic month.

First of all there were editorial training courses to run in London and in Shrewsbury, followed by a heavy load of marking journalism assignments and media law exams for students at Southampton Solent University.

Then I jetted out to New Jersey to run some editorial workshops and social media sessions with the legal editors at xperthr.com.  The great news is they've just won their first award.

And I spent most of last week running a series of one-day media law refresher sessions for editorial staff and teams.

Today, I've been completing the prep for my annual session on the Guild of Agricultural Journalists/John Deere training course while keeping half an eye on the latest developments in the progress of the Defamation Bill.

I should have made time to blog at some point, but sometimes it all gets too much.

Twitter lists for media law and UK national newspapers

Inforrm Blog published its list of 90 legal tweeters the other day.  The list is made up principally of UK-based folk who tweet about media related law topics, but there are a few from the US too.

I'm flattered to be on it, alongside really good legal tweeters such as David Allen Green of New Statesman and Jack of Kent blog flame. And I've gained a few new Twitter followers as result of my inclusion.

It's also a great demonstration of how much we like lists. We look to see if we've been included and we usually have a suggestion or two for names that might have been left out.

Journalism.co.uk has also updated its Twitter list of national newspaper tweeters, which might be worth a look.

Link round-up: The Leveson Inquiry - and a little bit of privacy

I'm trying to keep my eye on the Leveson Inquiry, so it seems appropriate to pull together a few links on the subject:

• Not surprisingly, the BBC's coverage is comprehensive. There's a handy summary of week one, plus some early sign's of Leveson's thinking neatly summarised by political correspondent Ross Hawkins.
• They also offer a Leveson Inquiry Q&A.
• The most recent episode of journalism.co.uk's excellent jpod series looks at press self-regulation following discussions at the Society of Editors conference. The podcast includes interviews with Independent editor Chris Blackhurst and Martin Moore from the Media Standards Trust.
• Inforrm blog has made a clever move by bringing meejalaw's Judith Townend on board to pull together some good Twitter streams to follow. Judith also curated a Coveritlive version of day one as well as a storify of the first day's Tweets. Inforrm doesn't appear to have followed up during the week. Let's hope there's more coverage still to come on the blog.
• Free Speech Blog is publishing summaries and updates too, along with the latest list of  week two core participants who are due to be heard.
• The Guardian has a useful landing page featuring all things Leveson, including this video of Editor Alan Rusbridger's Orwell Lecture.which takes phonehacking as its starting point.

• Real gluttons for punishment can watch the Leveson Inquiry events live on BBC Democracy Live while snippets can also be viewed on the telegraphtv youtube channel or the Telegraph's live update page.

In other news bloggers including Guido Fawkes and David Allen Green of Jack of Kent and New Statesman fame appeared before the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions. Here's Green's post about it.

With the Culture, Media and Sport Committee also doing its stuff too over the past few months, you could be forgiven for thinking that all parliamentary committee business is currently taken up with media-related issues.

Parliamentary joint committee publishes report on Draft Defamation Bill

                                                  Science writer wins libel appeal                Photo: englishpen 

The Joint Committee report on the Draft Defamation Bill has been published. Here's the official summary. The main points that jump out for me are:
UGC:
There are recommendations to formalise the approach to notice and take down procedures on web forums; and to make a distinction between treatment of material from comments made by clearly named/identified individuals and those posted by anonymous ones.
Substantial harm:
The committee report says individuals and corporations should demonstrate serious and substantial harm in order to bring a libel action. These terms will, of course, need to be defined. It also recommends: "corporations should be required to obtain the permission on the court before bringing a libel claim". 
Extension of privilege:
Privilege should be extended to "fair and accurate reports of academic and scientific conferences and also to peer-reviewed articles appearing in journals", says the report. This should be encouraging news for journalists at publications such as New Scientist, who I was talking to recently.
   Here's the full report, if you like that sort of thing. Handily all recommendations are highlighted in bold for ease of scanning. 
  At first glance it looks like there's plenty here for the media to be happy about. But, of course, there's still some way to go before any of these recommendations and other Draft Bill proposals become law.

An interesting week for libel law

It's a good week for anyone interested in libel law.

The Joint committee on the Draft Libel Reform bill will publish its report at midnight.

We're also expecting the Supreme Court ruling on the use of the Reynolds defence in the Flood v Times Newspapers case.

I'll be interested to see what the Draft Libel Reform Bill committee has to say on how the law should deal with user-generated content on reader forums.

It will also be useful to see whether it has any proposals to offer on whether organisations should have to demonstrate 'substantial' harm in order to be able to bring a libel case.

Well, I'm excited anyway...

Media law resources for journalists

I've had a few chats with media law lecturers on journalism degrees and postgraduate qualifications recently. I'm pleased to hear that a number of them recommend the book Law for Journalists by Frances Quinn.

It's a useful and acessible law reference book for new and existing journalists. I use it when I'm running media law sessions for magazine and web publishers - I think it gives good old McNae's a run for its money.

Here are a few of the media law resources I use:
British and Irish Legal Information Institute
Inforrm blog
Jack of Kent
Judiciary of England and Wales
Law Commission
Media Guardian
Meeja Law
Out-law.com
Press Complaints Commission
Press complaints (the unofficial site)
Press Gazette

Any others you'd like to add?