Revisited: “Harassment and the Media”: Part 2 Media Claims in Practice

In this feature we revisit some older posts which may still be of current interest.  This was first posted on 16 March 2010 and is the second part of a post in which Mark Thomson and Nicola McCann discuss the law and practice of harassment as applied to the media.

In Thomas News Group Newspapers Ltd [2001] EWCA Civ 1233) the Sun had published an article which reported on alleged racist misconduct by the police and that a civilian clerk had made a complaint over the same. This was followed by another article which included a number of readers’ comments and then a final article which complained about the punishments imposed on the police officers after “a civilian black clerk had complained about a series of exchanges at Bishopsgate last July.”

Celebrity, reporting court hearings and a musical prodigy

On 31 March 2010, the Court of Appeal decided that the media should be granted access to a hearing in the Court of Protection which involved a 30 year old known then only as “A”, who has severe learning difficulties associated with Autism Spectrum Disorder and who is blind but is also a  musical prodigy. That case, A v Independent News & Media Limited & Ors ([2010] EWCA 343) was important for another reason, providing the first recognition in English law of a right under Article 10(1) of the European Convention of Human Rights to access to information – in that case, information concerning a court hearing.   Dan Tench discussed the case in a posting on 6 April 2010.