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Whatever gooses your gander ([info]khym_chanur) wrote in [info]unfunnybusiness,
@ 2009-10-13 22:59:00
Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Guardian gagged from reporting parliament
From the Guardian:
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.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

(Post a new comment)


[info]dana
2009-10-13 07:07 am UTC (link)
OK, memory recall, isn't the Guardian the left wing newspaper?

I think it's the one I used to read in England when I wanted to read editorials which didn't make me want to break things.

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[info]ravenscanary
2009-10-13 07:48 am UTC (link)
It is the lefty paper, yes.

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[info]notbulgarian
2009-10-13 03:40 pm UTC (link)
It's the liberal paper if you ask me (using the Euro definition). It frequently makes me want to break things. I stick to the Independent for a reason.

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[info]dana
2009-10-13 11:49 pm UTC (link)
Well, it didnt' have page 3 girls, and that for me, was a positive benchmark for a British newspaper.

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[info]kitt_in_socks
2009-10-13 09:04 am UTC (link)
On one hand this is really disturbing, imo. On the other, #Trafigura (the story supposedly under the gag order) is now the number two trend on Twitter.

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[info]adevyish
2009-10-13 09:27 am UTC (link)
People probably wouldn't have cared as much if there hadn't been a gag order.

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[info]bienegold
2009-10-13 09:35 am UTC (link)
I don't know why that's such a hard lesson for people to learn.

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[info]kitt_in_socks
2009-10-14 01:41 am UTC (link)
Gotta love the Streisand Effect.

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[info]adevyish
2009-10-13 09:35 am UTC (link)
The cat seems pretty much out of the bag...

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[info]lady_ganesh
2009-10-13 02:09 pm UTC (link)
More details here, too.

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[info]lab
2009-10-13 10:29 am UTC (link)
Well played, guardian.co.uk, well played.

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[info]rachelmap
2009-10-13 10:46 am UTC (link)
Seriously. "Something happened. We aren't allowed to tell you what it was, who's involved or what Parliament is doing about it (if anything), but this thing that happened is so important that Parliament has commanded us to shut right up or suffer dire consequences. This is in spite of the ancient statute guaranteeing our freedom of speech. We're sure nobody is the least bit curious about what's going on."

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[info]lab
2009-10-13 10:59 am UTC (link)
It's a fucking classic. Nothing quite compares to the force of the web 2.0 hipster crowd feeling like they have to play "investigative journalist because our lefty paper can't". (with me being one of them, of course.)

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[info]magnolia_mama
2009-10-13 11:19 am UTC (link)
I wonder if they borrowed that ploy from State of Play?

(American here, and not terribly familiar with how the British press operates, so maybe this is a tactic that's been used before. I was simply reminded of that scene in SoP when Bill Nighy's character decides to play hardball by printing a paper that's basically exactly what you said in your comment.)

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[info]rachelmap
2009-10-13 11:45 am UTC (link)
Bill Nighy is one of my favorite actors. How did I miss this one?

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[info]cjk
2009-10-13 12:24 pm UTC (link)
You absolutely need to watch State of Play, if you haven't yet. It's got the very, very best of British actors -- including John Simm and David Morrissey in the main roles, playing their hearts out (Simm's great climax in the final episode is breathtaking) and, hilariously, Philip Glenister playing a DCI, as well as Kelly Macdonald being scarily adorable, and entirely shippable with Glenister's character, a *glorious* performance by Nighy, a sparkling James McAvoy and a Marc Warren who steals the show by playing a wannabe Elton John lite -- and it's got a cool plot and so, so much brilliant acting. My DVD has grooves in it by now.

Apparently there's also a Hollywood remake with Brad Pitt or something about, but I daren't watch it for fear of being too disappointed.

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[info]magnolia_mama
2009-10-13 12:28 pm UTC (link)
I second everything you said. I'm afraid to watch the US remake too, even though I love Russell Crowe (in all his wanky glory) and I think casting Helen Mirren in Bill Nighy's role is a stroke of genius.

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[info]talec
2009-10-13 10:33 pm UTC (link)
Oh man, the US remake. I watched that in the theater and was all, "This is a really good film. Not subtle at all in its digs at Blackwater, though." And then at the credits I saw it was based on a british miniseries, went home, looked it up on Wikipedia, and... yeah. Article said it was pretty true, story-wise, to the series. And made before Blackwater was infamous.

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[info]magnolia_mama
2009-10-13 12:26 pm UTC (link)
Bill Nighy, John Simm, James McAvoy, Philip Glenister - it's an excellent miniseries with a great cast (directed by David Yates, btw, who went on to do the last 4 Harry Potter movies).

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[info]fern_on_fen
2009-10-14 02:13 am UTC (link)
David Yates has only directed the last two Harry Potter films. But after he directs part I and II of DH, he will have directed four, so my intense nerdiness gives you a break. :P

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[info]magnolia_mama
2009-10-14 02:23 am UTC (link)
Does it count that he's already started directing DH? :-P Maybe we can compromise and say he's done 2-1/2 of the Potter films.

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[info]darksumomo
2009-10-13 03:15 pm UTC (link)
Icon Love. Oh, and there's an diary entry about this story on Daily Kos here. Lots of *facepalm* and *rage* and political wank about both the British and US political systems in the 300+ comments.

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[info]honorh
2009-10-13 11:00 am UTC (link)
Damn. That is passive-aggression taken to the level of an art form.

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[info]honorh
2009-10-13 11:01 am UTC (link)
(Er, which is to say, yes, indeed, I agree with you.)

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[info]lady_ganesh
2009-10-13 02:05 pm UTC (link)
It's pretty beautiful.

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[info]mary_mac
2009-10-13 11:35 pm UTC (link)
It's pretty much how we got Parliamentary reporting in the first place. The British Press have been playing this game waaaay longer than Trafigura. They're good at it.

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[info]lab
2009-10-14 08:16 pm UTC (link)
<3 icon love!

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[info]mary_mac
2009-10-14 09:55 pm UTC (link)
Noser is awesome!

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[info]bienegold
2009-10-13 12:13 pm UTC (link)
I usually don't read linked articles, but I'm glad I did this time. That's just beautiful.

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[info]sarracenia
2009-10-13 11:17 pm UTC (link)
I damn near applauded. I have to admire that level of sheer, passive-aggressive fuck you.

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[info]chikane
2009-10-13 11:16 am UTC (link)
I love this. So they shut people up? Talk about being shut up and make the internet reveal it in all its glory.

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[info]pathology_doc
2009-10-13 11:33 am UTC (link)
Her Majesty has, I believe, three constitutional powers - to be consulted, to encourage, and to warn (after Bagehot).

The exercise of the second, and perhaps the third, of those powers would seem appropriate right now.

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[info]mandragora
2009-10-13 08:11 pm UTC (link)
Er, well, no. Not really. This was a straight-forward gagging injunction obtained by a private interest (Trafigura) against another private interest (Guardian Newspapers). I have to question the judgement of Peter Carter-Ruck (assuming it was him acting on the case and not one of his partners) in obtaining the injunction in the first place as it seems to be singularly ill-judged. Although, to be fair it might have been one of those situations when you advise against it but the client insists anyway...

This injunction was clearly doomed as soon as The Guardian's lawyers applied to set it aside as it was obviously obtained ex parte (that is, without notice to the other side) and was probably granted by the Duty Judge out of hours. It's usually not difficult to obtain this sort of injunction out of hours as the Duty Judge will usually decide to grant the order restraining publication on the basis that the other side (the media publication in question) can then swiftly apply to set it aside in an inter partes hearing (that is with both sides being present to argue) that can be arranged at short notice afterwards.

Kudos to the Grauniad, though, for a lovely bit of 'how to whet their appetite'. Think Trafigura will be cursing the day they went for that injunction.

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[info]sarracenia
2009-10-14 01:00 am UTC (link)
Why do you assume the Queen should invoke her constitutional powers rather than letting the legal system and public opinion slaughter them?

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Some related and terrifying information
[info]charamei
2009-10-13 01:13 pm UTC (link)
Private Eye #1246 (last fortnight's edition). I can't find it online, so excerpts:

'Last month a certain institution obtained a high court injunction to prevent a certain newspaper from publishing a certain document. More than that we cannot say: to do so is fraught with danger.

[...]

[In the past] If a company or individual tried to injunct a newspaper in advance but the newspaper said that it would justify the story in any subsequent libel action, the tendency of judges was to say "publish and be sued". For a while, pre-emptive high court orders seemed to be going the way of Spangles and the Bay City Rollers.

Not Now. Thanks to some aggressive solicitors and timorous judges, prior restraint is now a flourishing industry. If lawyers get a whiff that one of their clients is about to be embarrassed, late in the evening they contact a duty judge - often one who has no experience of libel or media law. And the judge ... errs on the side of caution. The newspaper may not even be aware of this "hearing without notice", still less have a chance to argue its case.

[...] The new breed of super-injunction is far more oppressive than the traditional court order under which a newspaper or TV channel is (perhaps temporarily) prevented from publishing a particular allegation. It usually includes an order that "the publication of all information relating to these proceedings or of information describing them or the intended claim is expressly prohibited." (Our italics.) In other words, nobody can report that the order has been granted, or who applied for it. Even the identities of the judge and newspaper remain secret, and anyone who even hints at them "may be held to be contempt of court and may be imprisoned, fined or have their assets seized".

[...]

The Guardian's legal correspondent noted last week that "it is impossible to say just how many of these cases there are", since no one can report or discuss them - though the Eye learns that one MP hopes to break the conspiracy of silence, under parliamentary privilege, when the commons reassembles later this month. But it's clear that they are breeding and sprouting like giant hogweed: "The Guardian, for instance, has been served with at least 12 notices of injunctions that could not be reported so far this year, compared with six in the whole of 2006 and five in 2005."

[...]

In one recent application for a super-injunction, the QC for the claimants explained to the judge why a newspaper must not only be stopped from publishing its story but also banned from alluding to the gagging order: if it was allowed to report the injunction, it would probably run a piece accusing his clients of trying to muzzle the press.

Which, of course, is exactly what they were doing. The super-injunction was duly granted.'

Bolding is all mine.

Good luck to the Guardian, and here's some sincere hope that they and Private eye between them manage to get rid of this terrifying trend.

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Re: Some related and terrifying information
[info]charamei
2009-10-13 01:17 pm UTC (link)
And as I was typing, the gagging order was lifted. Seems Carter-Fuck cannot stand against the combined might of Twitter and the Grauniad.

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[info]azazello
2009-10-13 02:45 pm UTC (link)
The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

Are you allowed to tell us this?

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[info]khym_chanur
2009-10-14 06:16 am UTC (link)
I dunno, my lawyer isn't allowed to talk to me.

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[info]quantumreality
2009-10-14 04:38 am UTC (link)
Was any of the material the Guardian is prohibited from reporting in Hansard? If so there's probably a way around the gag order by looking at the actual proceedings.

The UK is also apparently famous for having a different burden of proof for libel and slander, so people who want to exercise gag orders often pursue the lawsuit in the UK and then use the verdict to try and suppress the material in other countries.

Tis one of those reasons why I sometimes wish for a real World Court. :)

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[info]mary_mac
2009-10-14 10:13 pm UTC (link)
That's pretty much what the Guardian were prodding people to do. You can't gag Hansard. Well, I suppose you could try. I don't think you'd win. They have the Law Lords on their side.

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[info]southbitch
2009-10-14 10:42 pm UTC (link)
I loved what the Guardian did there, they clearly know how internet (specifically Twitter) works, Trafigura was a big hit :)

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