The Register/OUT-LAW.com: Times libel ruling is warning for online news archives

The protection offered in libel cases by a responsible journalism defence can ‘evaporate’ if the crucial facts of the case change and web archives of news stories must be changed to reflect this, a High Court ruling from earlier this month has said.

As the Register and OUT-LAW report, the ruling came in a case where the Times continued to publish a defamatory article online about a policeman from the London Met, who was being investigated.

The Times defended the online version of the 2006 article claiming qualified privilege and responsible journalism, but was told that this could no longer apply to the online version of the story after the outcome of the investigation, which found insufficient evidence to take criminal proceedings against the officer.

“The failure to remove the article from the website, or to attach to the articles published on the Times’ website a suitable qualification, cannot possibly be described as responsible journalism (…) It is not in the public interest that there should continue to be recorded on the internet the questions as to [the officer's] honesty which were raised in 2006, and it is not fair to him,” the ruling stated.

Full story at this link…

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Update: Le Carré’s past – as told on the web

I wrote a post yesterday which looked at how the story of author John le Carré’s alleged temptation to defect to the Russians during his time as a British Intelligence officer (as reported by the Sunday Times) was spreading over the web, despite Le Carré’s lengthy contention with the report.

Hari Kunzru, who wrote a review that referred to the Sunday Times report, in Saturday’s Guardian, has left a comment:

For the record, I wasn’t aware of Le Carré’s objections to Liddle’s interview. My review was filed before the letter was printed in The Times. I’m not surprised. Even from Liddle’s quote the inference that Le Carré ‘almost defected’ is hard to draw.

So either the Guardian Review’s editor didn’t know of Le Carré’s complaint either, or it was a conscious decision to leave it as Kunzru wrote it.

It does seem to suggest that complaints or letters published post-coverage don’t really rectify a situation. It’s lucky that Le Carré aka David J.M. Cornwell enjoyed the Calvados and Liddle’s ‘erudite and perceptive’ conversation, or there could have been rather more costly repercussions for the Sunday Times.

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Le Carre-d away: has the author’s alleged desire to defect become fact?

This, in Saturday’s Guardian, in Hari Kunzru’s review of John Le Carré’s latest book, ‘A Most Wanted Man’:

In a recent interview Le Carré was asked if he ever considered defecting. “Well, I wasn’t tempted ideologically … but when you spy intensively and you get closer and closer to the border … it seems such a small step to jump … and, you know, find out the rest.” Though this has been reported as some sort of tabloid confession (”I was tempted to defect, says spy novelist Le Carré”), it seems primarily interesting as a key to his fiction, whose central concern is the exploration of the metaphorical borderland occupied by the proponents of any polarised conflict.

The Guardian, September 27 2008

Perhaps surprisingly, no mention of the fact that Le Carré says that his quotes were out of context, as this lengthy letter to the Sunday Times pointed out. Le Carré writes that his interviewer, Rod Liddle, chose not to use a tape recorder and  subsequently misrepresented him that he was misrepresented in the interview and this article:

… he [Liddle] failed to encompass or indeed record the general point I was making about the temptations of defection.

Lord Annan, I ventured in our conversation, had declared that four years of Intelligence work were as much as any sane man could stand. I painted for Mr Liddle the plight of professional eavesdroppers who identify so closely with the people they are listening to that they start to share their lives.

It was in this context that I made the point that, in common with other intelligence officers who lived at close quarters with their adversaries, I had from time to time placed myself intellectually in the shoes of those on one side of the Curtain who took the short walk to the other; and that rationally and imaginatively I had understood the magnetic pull of such a step, and empathised with it.

John Le Carré, Times Online, September 20 2008.

Presumably the Guardian Review’s editors and the writer, Hari Kunzru, were aware of Le Carré’s problem with Liddle’s interview and chose not to mention it, although Kunzru does refer to the tabloid-like sensationalisation of the interview.

A Google search for John Le Carré brings back reviews for his latest book, but if you search “john le carre + defect” it’s possible to see how far the Sunday Times reports have spread… The AP reported it as the Sunday Times did, and then it went far and wide of course.

Will Le Carré’s consideration of defection go down in the history books, with no reference to his complaint?

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paidContent:UK: Times to charge for online archive

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Media Week: The Times brand is top for attracting business readers

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France magazine editor writes for Times Online

The editor of Archant-owned France Magazine, Carolyn Boyd, has been commissioned to write a monthly article for the Times Online travel section.

Hoping to attract interest in her own magazine, the article links to the magazine’s website and its subscriptions page.

“I’d written for them before I joined France Magazine, so it’s a great way of carrying on the relationship and promoting the magazine at the same time,” she said.

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Traffic soars to Times Online blogs

Global page views of Times Online’s blogs rose past the 2.5 million mark in May this year, according to figures from the publisher – an increase of 500 per cent compared to May 2007.

The graph below shows the overall growth of its top performing blogs. Daniel Finkenstein’s Comment Central and Paris correspondent Charles Bremner’s Le Blogue are shown to perform consistently well, while The Game blog and Money Central (no doubt spurred by the recent economic downturn) have increased in popularity:

The site’s top 10 blogs in terms of global page views in May this year were:

The Game Blog 562,835
Money Central 552,941
Comment Central 541,598
Alpha Mummy 170,862
Fanzine Fanzone 136,760
Charles Bremner 114,884
Formula 1 103,607
Snakes and Ladders 94,202
Mousetrap Technology 88,496
Red Box 85,96

As you can see the top three account for the majority of the blogs’ traffic. Figures for TimesOnline’s page views from May’s Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCe) report suggest the site recorded 117,826,926 page impressions. These stats therefore suggest blogs accounted for roughly 2.12 per cent of the site’s total page views.

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Times to take legal action against Media Lens website?

The editors of MediaLens – a website aimed at exposing propaganda in mainstream media reporting – has claimed that the Times has threatened to take legal action against the site for publishing an email from the Times’ chief foreign commentator Bronwen Maddox and allegedly encouraging MediaLens readers to send ‘threatening emails’ to the writer.

The original piece ‘Selling The Fireball’, which sparked the attention of Times Newspapers’ legal manager Alastair Brett, questioned Maddox’s commentary on Iran’s relationship with Europe and the US.

Readers were asked to email Maddox – as well as Ian Black, Middle East editor of the Guardian, which also had its coverage challenged – with the following disclaimer:

“The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you do write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.”

According to Peter Wilby writing on Guardian.co.uk, the Times became concerned by “vexatious and threatening emails from visitors to Media Lens” received by Maddox.

“My job is to stop journalists having their time wasted like this. It’s not proper behaviour for Media Lens to give out people’s emails and make a mess of their inboxes,” Brett is reported as saying.

Excerpts from an email sent by the columnist have since been removed from the site after threats of legal and police action from Times Newspapers made on June 28 and July 2.

“We have sought legal advice and, having essentially zero resources for fighting a court case, feel we have no choice but to delete Maddox’s email from our media alert, ‘Selling The Fireball’, as demanded. . . We will have more to say about this in due course, as will others,” says a message on the site’s homepage.

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Times editor James Harding on the Daily Show

Times editor James Harding tells Jon Stewart all about his new book Alpha Dogs:

James Harding on The Daily Show

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Times opens up 200-year digital archive

The Times has officially opened up its digital archive of 200 years of newspapers.

The archive, which was launched in beta last month, features content from the paper between January 1 1785 and December 31 1985.

A few pages are missing, according to the site’s FAQs, and there are no editions from December 1 1978 to November 12 1979 because of an industrial dispute at the time.

Each edition has been digitally scanned and the archive has a very speedy and accurate search.

Access to the archive will be free for an introductory period, but registration with TimesOnline is required.

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