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.

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