The Inforrm blog is taking a summer break for a few weeks. We thank all our readers and contributors who, over the past two and a half years, have made this into one of the world’s leading media law blogs. The blog has now had over 1.1 million page views since February 2010. We now have 592 followers for the blog with 1,195 followers of our twitter feed (@inforrm).
We have had 1297 posts from several dozen contributors. We have sought to cover the full range of media and law issues – from the “libel reform” debate, through “super injunction spring” into the “phone hacking firestorm”.
In our post this time last year we suggested that privacy was the topic of the first few months of 2011 – ending with the report of Lord Neuberger’s Committee on Super-Injunctions – “Super-Injunctions, Anonymised Injunctions and Open Justice” (discussed in a post at the time) and then the extraordinary period of “May Madness“. We went on to deal with the extraordinary speed with which phone hacking broke out of its broadsheet ghetto and came to dominate the news agenda and the establishment of the Leveson Inquiry.
The Leveson Inquiry has dominated the agenda for the past 12 months. A mass of evidence from victims, lawyers, politicians and the police is available on its website. The Inquiry has dominated our posting for the past 12 months – with regular round ups of the evidence from Natalie Peck (Weeks 1 and 2, Weeks 3 and 4, Week 5, Week 6, Week 7, Week 8, Week 9, Week 10, Week 11, Week 12, Week 13, Week 14, Week 15, Week 16, Week 17, Week 18, Week 19, Week 20, Week 21, Week 22, Week 23, Weeks 24 and 25) and Week 26. Part One of the Inquiry came to an end last week. It is unclear whether there will ever be a Part 2.
After “super-injunction spring” there was a dramatic decline in privacy injunctions – with only one (failed) application against the media and a number of old injunctions discharged. There was one libel jury trial (Cooper v Associated Newspapers) and a number of “judge alone trials”, notably the remarkable cases of El-Naschie and Bento. The Defamation Bill is currently before parliament. All these and many other media and law stories have been extensively covered on Inforrm over the past year.
The top ten posts of the past three months were as follows:
What the Defamation Bill means for the internet – Graham Smith
News: “Twitter joke” case, rehearing ordered before a three judge court
News: Queens Speech – at last the Defamation Bill
Case Law: El Naschie v Macmillan – claim against scientific publisher dismissed – Gervase de Wilde
Contempt: Is online publication continuous? – Mike Dodd
Freedom of Expression: the Adventures of Tintin in the land of the law – Jogchum Vrielink
Finally, we remind readers that we welcome posts on media and legal issues from outside contributors. The purpose of the blog is provide a forum for discussion of the issues and we welcome all points of view and from all countries. If you are interested in contributing please contact Inforrm at our email address: inforrmeditorial@googlemail.com.
We will be returning to regular posting in the second half of August. In the meantime, we wish everyone a relaxing summer break.
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