Lord Justice Sedley on media slant and the right to reputation

Media Lawyer has reported a number of interesting comments made by Lord Justice Sedley yesterday at the Thomson-Reuters/Justice conference on human rights. He is reported as having noted recent moves by the courts "away from some of the rigidities and artifices of libel law". He also warned, however, that:

it is an important fact in Convention law and in human rights law that care must be taken not to confuse the noise that the media are able to make with public opinion... public opinion I sometimes think is in large part an echo chamber inhabited when one gets there by leader writers and public moralists and perhaps not many other people... there are interests which do not feature in the conventional account of public opinion - and the right to reputation is one of them - which do have to be watched and guarded.

The full transcript of the speech may be made available anon. In addition, Lord Lester was speaking at the event on human rights under the new government, while there was also a session on the right to reputation that was to be led by Heather Rogers QC and Padraig Reidy of Index on Censorship. I haven't yet come across any report on what was said in those sessions (presuming that Lord Justice Sedley's comments were made during his plenary).

Media Futures: keynotes from the Belfast Media Festival

Last week saw the inaugural Belfast Media Festival which was aimed at projecting forward on what might / could be the shape of the media sector in Northern Ireland in the coming digital years (the sector is already one of the major employers in the province).

The Festival included five keynote speakers:  Peter Johnston (Director BBC NI); John Linwood (Chief Technology Officer, BBC); Janice Hadlow (Director BBC2); Sir Bob Geldof, and Martin Davidson (BBC Commissioning Editor). Videos of these sessions are available here.

In particular, see the presentation by John Linwood which gives an interesting and concise overview of the possible future(s) of audio-visual (interactive) content delivery, and also then the remarkably incisive speech by Bob Geldof on the future of journalism (interesting and engaging from the start; riveting from about 20 mins).

Brand on celebrity; Dispatches on phone-hacking

There have been a couple of interesting items on tv in recent days re media law issues. First, Jeremy Paxman - clearly a fan - conducted an interview with Russell Brand which highlighted issues such as the 'compliance culture', privacy and celebrity.

Secondly, last night's Dispatches on Channel 4 saw Peter Oborne analyse the phone hacking scandal and probe the issue of quite what Andy Coulson knew (this will be available on 4OD shortly).