News: Conservative Strategist Lynton Crosby and an Australian twitter libel action

The Conservative Party’s Australian election strategist, Lynton Crosby, has brought defamation proceedings against a Labour politician in the Federal Court in Australia over an alleged defamatory tweet.  The action is being brought by Mr Crosby and his business partner, Mark Textor over a tweet from Mike Kelly, a Federal Labor Politician who is now the Minister for Defence Materiel.  He tweets as @MikeKellyMP. 

Paris Brown: A Case in Point for the DPP – Ashley Hurst and Ryan Dolby-Stevens

The recent experience of Paris Brown, the 17-year-old who resigned before taking up her role as Kent’s Youth Police and Crime Commissioner following a furore surrounding comments she made on Twitter, demonstrates exactly the type of police activity that the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, was seeking to prevent when he issued prosecution guidelines (the “Guidelines“) in December of last year.

Twitter enters the courts in Ontario – Adam Lazier

Under a policy that came into force on February 1, journalist are now allowed to tweet and live-blog proceedings in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, the province’s court that hears civil and major criminal proceedings.  Although the policy has a number of limitations, it marks an important step forward for open courts in Ontario.

Case Law: Cruddas v Adams, Damages of £45,000 for a blog and Twitter Libel

In a judgment handed down on 4 February 2013 ([2013] EWHC 145 (QB)) Mr Justice Eady awarded the former Conservative Party treasurer, Peter Cruddas, defamation damages of £45,000 in respect of 9 blogs and 12 tweets by published by lobbyist Mark Adams.

A Defence of Responsible Tweeting? – Paul Bernal

One of the many issues to emerge as a result of the McAlpine saga is the question of how vulnerable users of social media like twitter might be under defamation law.  Lord McAlpine is reported to be planning to sue up to 10,000 twitter users – and some famous individuals have already been named as among them: George Monbiot, Sally Bercow and Alan Davies. 

Libel Claims against ITV and Twitter – Lord McAlpine and the restoration of reputation [Updated]

As we pointed out last week, Lord McAlpine’s reputation was severely damaged by the event surrounding the ill-conceived Newsnight broadcast of 2 November 2012. That damage was caused in part by the publication on Twitter of material which linked him to the unidentified individual mentioned in the broadcast.  Lord McAlpine was plainly entitled to have his reputation restored.  This was, in practice, substantially achieved by the apology given by the BBC on 10 November 2012.

Opinion: Twitter, Twit… Writ? – Dominic Crossley

It has the makings of a pub quiz question: What do Sally Bercow, Nick Griffin, Lalit Modi, George Monbiot and Rupert Murdoch have in common?  (And please don’t answer this question by way of Twitter). For the purposes of this article, they are some recent examples of those finding themselves in legal trouble on Twitter. They are unlikely to be the last.

The Leveson Inquiry and the BBC – Brian Cathcart

Is there a link between the BBC crisis and Leveson? Does the fate of George Entwistle teach us lessons about regulated journalism? Yesterday’s papers were fumbling for the connection.

In the Observer, the headline on Peter Preston’s media column declares: ‘While Leveson’s in his bunker, the media’s in chaos’. Dominic Lawson writes in the Sunday Times under the headline: ‘Forget a press gag, it’s Twitter we must police.’

Beyond a joke? Social Media, free speech and “grossly offensive” communications – Eloise le Santo

This week a teenager from Lancashire was sent to prison for making sick and incredibly distasteful jokes on his facebook page concerning missing 5 year old April Jones and Madeline Macann. Matthew Woods, who is 19 years old, is said to have adapted the jokes from Sickapedia, a website which publishes sick jokes, and posted them ‘in a moment of drunken stupidity’. Woods pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12 weeks imprisonment.

Free speech and prosecution in the age of Twitter – Adam Wagner

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has decided not to charge Daniel Thomas for posting a homophobic message on Twitter, the social networking site, about the swimmer Tom Daley. The press release, which takes the form of an extended quote from the Director of Public Prosecutions, is fascinating. I have reproduced it in full below.