Let's have a thread about the gagging order on reporting parliament because everyone else has one and we wouldn't want to be thought of as shirking our internet responsibilities.

The Guardian has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights.

Today's published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/12/guardian-gagged-from-reporting-parliament

― James Mitchell, Tuesday, 13 October 2009 07:24 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Ahem.

― James Mitchell, Tuesday, 13 October 2009 07:24 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Perhaps I'm being naive, but why would the government want to gag that enough to put up with all this fuss? Does that report reflect on them in some way that I'm missing?

― caek, Tuesday, 13 October 2009 07:46 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Am I reading this wrong or isn't this more about Carter Ruck "protecting" it's clients than the government "gagging" anyone?

― Ned Trifle II, Tuesday, 13 October 2009 08:08 (37 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Or rather isn't the Guardian, in it's usual roundabout way, highlighting a problem with the law as it stands that may well be used by law firms from now on to prevent the reporting of parliament? i.e. if this goes unchallenged. The fact that I've seen the question in question on at least three different websites in the last couple of minutes (including wiki) makes the whole thing a bit silly.

― Ned Trifle II, Tuesday, 13 October 2009 08:12 (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol twitter flashmob 2.0

― James Mitchell, Tuesday, 13 October 2009 08:21 (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

This is the first story on Guido and lol at his insane commenteers who start off with "THIS IS IT PEOPLE - WE ARE NOW IN ENDTIMES" and then start getting into the McCanns and how the BNP wouldn't let this type of thing happen.

Well, if it was Carter-Ruck's intention to keep what Trafigura are up to out of the press it has well and truly fucked up.

― Ned Trifle II, Tuesday, 13 October 2009 08:32 (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

oh twitter

― caek, Tuesday, 13 October 2009 08:34 (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"The gag is generally considered in the Blogosphere to be…"

― caek, Tuesday, 13 October 2009 08:35 (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

we are going to GAG THEM

― James Mitchell, Tuesday, 13 October 2009 08:42 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

Like I said, you can't prevent reporting of parliament. It takes place in public and it's proceedings get published in Hansard the next day anyway. I guess parliament itself could prohibit reporting, but I'm not sure it's ever met in camera, even during the war.

I must say that I don't actually see why this is supposed to prevent reporting of parliament - from what I've read, it seems to be an order to keep the company's documents confidential. If they're private documents, I guess that might be possible. If Paul Farrely reads them out in parliament, which he's entitled to do, they'd become public that way and i'm pretty sure they could then be reported that way, regardless of any court order. I may have got it wrong, I haven't read much yet, but I don't see why the big fuss.

― Ismael Klata, Tuesday, October 13, 2009 8:48 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

Just because something takes place in public and is documented in a form available to the public, doesn't mean you can report on it in a newspaper or elsewhere without being in contempt of court.

Nothing on the beeb about this, despite the fact that it's now gone global, as it were.

Has this anything to do with the new supreme court, I ask in all ignorance?

There was a long-ish article in a recent Private Eye about the increasing use of gagging orders, and orders to prevent even the reporting of gagging orders. Their argument is that the volume of these is detrimental to public life and is a result of pusilanimous circuit judges erring on the side of caution.

They said they even had to take considerable amount of legal advice even to be able to publish that much.

I can't really elaborate because I haven't got the article in front of me, and I'm very far from being an expert, but it seemed pretty damning.

Obviously, as everyone's pointed out, the information is freely available, but I suppose the argument would run that it is not publicised, and therefore is limited to people who actually want to find out these things - whereas newspapers would make a much bigger noise.

Just because something takes place in public and is documented in a form available to the public, doesn't mean you can report on it in a newspaper or elsewhere without being in contempt of court

Isn't ismael's point though that once this thing is in Hansard it'll be in the public domain and anyone can just repeat it?

The documents reveal that the London-based traders hoped to make profits of $7m a time by buying up what they called “bloody cheap” cargoes of sulphur-contaminated Mexican petrol. They decided to try to process the fuel on board a tanker anchored offshore, creating toxic waste they called “slops”.

One trader wrote on March 10, 2006: “I don’t know how we dispose of the slops and I don’t imply we would dump them, but for sure, there must be some way to pay someone to take them.” The resulting black, stinking, slurry was eventually dumped around landfills in Abidjan, after Trafigura paid an unqualified local man to take it away in tanker trucks at a cheap rate.

This is simply ridiculous. Firstly, there is a longstanding principle in the UK that Parliamentary privilege extends to reporting what happens in the House, and that comments made in Parliament can be reported without fear of contempt. And secondly, all of the above is a matter of public record. For example, anyone can go to the UK Parliament page, look at the future business for the House of Commons, grep the question book for the rest of the week, and learn that on Tuesday Newcastle-under-Lyme MP Paul Farrelly has a series of questions for the Secretary of State for Justice on suppression orders and press freedom, one of which specifically mentions Carter-Ruck solicitors and its corporate criminal client Trafigura.

http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2009/10/kafkaesque.html

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there's an important principal at stake, but it's comedy grandstanding from the guardian too. they haven't reported farrely's almost identical question about barclays/freshfields and the tax dodging gag, even though it's clear that the injunction only involves carter ruck/trafigura. so chances are, if they hadn't been gagged, they wouldn't have published anyway. although it'll be interesting to see what happens when the question's answered.

they're obviously right and the judges are behaving stupidly. but if rusbridger really felt so strongly he should have published anyway and gone to prison. you just can't get the martyrs these days.

xp to ned, it's already in hansard: http://tr.im/BznU

but the great thing is right now he doesn't need to publish-- he can just tell the internet he's been gagged and a whole gang of people will do the streisand-effect legwork for him.

barclays/freshfields and the tax dodging gag
There's an injunction against the Guardian about that too, I think.

I wonder who else has gags about this. BBC hasn't mentioned it at all.

i don't think the barclays injunction applies to reporting the hansard q though, does it? the guardian specifies that it's only a case involving carter-ruck, who aren't acting for barclays, just trafigura. agree with c sharp major, it's a good strategy if you want to publicise crazy libel laws, it's just a bit of a stunt is all.

think the injunctions apply to all media outlets? iirc not knowing that an injunction exists is no defence against breaching it. but i think all the papers get injunctions emailed round as a matter of routine.

That's what I thought (excepting the usual shit-we-forgot-Scotland lolz) but the Spectator is merrily publishing away

yeah the spectator blogpost - http://www.spectator.co.uk/alexmassie/5417651/british-press-banned-from-reporting-parliament-seriously.thtml - reads like the Spectator haven't had a gag order, and the writer doesn't talk as if he thinks the BBC had either.

maybe other papers/news outlets don't want to give the graun the publicity?

well at least if this sad business ends in the imprisonment of spectator editor fraser nelson, it won't have been a complete waste of time.

bbc are covering it now in a small way: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8304483.stm

Twitter flashmob so far has 12 people attending. The power of Web 2.0!

Just because something takes place in public and is documented in a form available to the public, doesn't mean you can report on it in a newspaper or elsewhere without being in contempt of court

That's correct, but it'd be a huge leap to make such an order about parliamentary proceedings rather than e.g. legal issues in the middle of a trial. If a court ever did try to gag that, which I'm still not convinced has happened here, it'd never survive an appeal - it's far too important.

guardian is in court today trying to overturn it. a duty judge just gets landed with all this shit in the middle of the night, and banning publication always seems like the safe thing to do, because that can be overturned whereas you can't unpublish something.

also lol:

@popjustice What The Guardian can't say http://twitpic.com/lczr6 about 1 hour ago from Tweetie

aaaaaaaaaaaand david leigh says carter-ruck has thrown in the towel. 2pm hearing won't go ahead now.

If that MP hadn't tabled a question for parliament we'd never have found out about any of this right?

Isn't ismael's point though that once this thing is in Hansard it'll be in the public domain and anyone can just repeat it?

― Ned Trifle II, Tuesday, October 13, 2009 10:31 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i'm pretty sure you can still be in contempt of a legal order by repeating information that is already in the public domain. it's much harder to get the legal order in these circumstances (i think the judges' view tends to be, what's the point?) though. but assuming they have one, it applies.

this whole incident is really baffling though.

As clangers go, this is a pretty massive one - it's turned something into front page news that would otherwise never have got anywhere near there.

I thought the graun's point was based on the 1688 bill of rights'
"Freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any place out of parliament"

ie it's not just that it's public domain, it's that it's hansard.

i think the point is that judges can make illegal orders, which is probably what happened here. carter-ruck knew they couldn't defend it at a hearing where the guardian was represented, so they backed down. but you can't just ignore a court order even if you think the judge got it wrong so they were still gagged.

and yeah, matt dc otm. the trafigura story to a large extent has been out in the open for a while, but it took carter-ruck to find a way to make people care.

it's turned something into front page news that would otherwise never have got anywhere near there

yeah! I guess this sort of tactic has always worked before for carter-ruck - they'd gag the private eye, the private eye would make a fuss about it, no-one else would care. But the Graun is good at using the internet & also i suspect their libel law struggles are becoming quite familiar to er one set internet armchair libertarians? i dunno-- if it was the Sun up in arms about being gagged i don't know they'd get the same sort of credence?

the legal equivalent of saying 'SHHHHHH' when the object of a conversation walks into a room, as opposed to just stopping talking.

having typed the above i'm not sure about it-- i guess i started thinking of the simon singh libel law case, and goldacre/matthias rath, and all of that, pretty much straight away. that the Guardian seems very ready to fight these sort of cases, and very eager to talk about how it fights them. but then maybe i only know that cos I read the guardian?

i think joe is right. if a court order is wrong (in the sense that it interprets law incorrectly), then you are still in contempt if you break it. they can't be overturned retroactively. the guardian's point about the 1688 bill of rights would/will presumably form part of their legal challenge, but note that they didn't actually break the court order while citing the bill.

the guardian do seem to get involved in way more libel and gagging fights than any other broadsheet, but i'm not sure they have much of a profile among people who don't read the guardian.

haha whoa look at the uk on http://trendsmap.com/

This is all over Daily Kos in the US right now!

I can think of a few stories that this kind of 'we can't even say there's an injunction' apply to, but are mostly to do with private citizens.

i doubt this will be reported elsewhere tbh.

as in mainstream UK media

basically seems like a legal error in one of those late night magistrate's courts when everyone was overtired that has happily come to nothing.

They've just published the original PQ.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/13/guardian-gagged-parliamentary-question

are mostly to do with private citizens.

Mostly to do with Michael Owen and Gary Lineker.

Just to clarify: libel, gagging and privacy are not the same thing. You're free to libel anyone, so long as you're prepared to pay damages for it. You're not free to break a gagging order, and it's a sort-of crime to do so. Privacy appears to be becoming a right - frankly the courts are making this stuff up as they go along - but it's more like libel in that breaching privacy isn't an offence in itself, though you may end up paying damages.

A gagging order is an injunction which has to be applied for at court, and you have to have due cause to get one. In this case it appears to be to protect your confidential documents. Though you could conceivably get it to prevent an anticipated libel or breach of privacy, you'd have to get it first - it's not a contempt of court if there's no court order to breach.

What's Andrew Marr's deal?

marr had an affair and a kid w/ alice miles according to people on the internet. injunction to protect the kid's privacy.

oh the connection i was making between libel and gagging was that I thought sometimes injunctions were granted on the grounds that what's been written is libel - fairly sure that's what's happened/happening in the Singh case.

Has Marr tried to stop that story?

Yeah, that's what I meant - you might seek an injunction to prevent further repeats of a libel because of the harm it'd cause you. Then the reprinted would risk damages AND contempt of court. The law is getting itself into dreadful trouble with every new development in this area - it'll need major reforming sooner rather than later.

I don't think the media is even allowed to refer to the existence of an injunction re: the Marr thing, or at least that was the case before.

PE had a bit of an ongoing beef with that, and I think mentioned it again in their recent article about the similar situation w/ Trafigura/Carter-Ruck

OK I see now (xp to myself). Marr tried to get an injunction vs. anyone even mentioning that he had tried to get injunction vs. anyone even mentioning that he had tried to get injunction vs.anyone even mentioning that he had tried to get injunction vs...etc. But failed.

Googling their names turns up amazing vitriol on the interwebs about him and her, I never knew people hated them so much.

xp to MPx4A - seems you can mention it.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/richard-ingrams/richard-ingrams-week-you-try-challenging-an-editor-armed-with-a-writ-856105.html

Hehe yeah, was just reading Alice Miles' contentious Wiki history. Vaguely remembered that PE had maybe stripped away one or two of the outer layers of kafkaesque secrecy about it.

Newsnight is apparently being sued as part of this? May actually explain the complete silence from the BBC this morning.

The BBC finally get round to a story and it's all about twitter.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8304908.stm
Which doesn't seem quite right to me.

Haha, great minds think alike, etc.

Paxman's got to pay

The Newsnight action is mentioned here.

I think that generating a big Twitter/internet furore was exactly what the Guardian was attempting in the first place, and that's probably the BBC covering it's arse by covering the coverage rather than the toxic waste story itself.

from that bbc article: "ever since the Spycatcher case in the 1980s news organisations which knowingly breach an injunction served on others are in contempt of court, so the corporation too felt bound by the Guardian injunction."

so carter-ruck only needed one injunction to shut everyone up!

http://www.wikileaks.org/wiki/BBC_deletes_important_story_on_toxic_waste_dumping_in_the_Ivory_Coast_after_legal_threats%2C_12_Dec_2009