On the 12th October 2009 the law firm Carter-Ruck took out an injunction on The Guardian, preventing it from reporting parliamentary proceedings. In particular, a question which was to be asked “later” in the week.
The freedom to report parliamentary sessions was established by the 1688 Bill of Rights and when The Guardian published news of the injunction at 20.31 on 12th October, there was a ripple of discontent among journalists and human rights activists alike. Suspicions as to the reasons for such an order sparked immediate investigation by many. The ripple quickly developed into a full-blown tidal wave.
Human rights activist, Richard Wilson, was one of the first to uncover the truth, and published a blog only half an hour later, following it with the tweet: Any guesses what this is about? My money’s on, ahem, #TRAFIGURA!
Lethal combination
By 21.57 the notorious (and much followed), blogger Guido Fawkes had posted the story. So too did Alex Massie of The Spectator who also included the question in question. Meanwhile tweets and re-tweets were flying thick and fast and with the help of the likes of Stephen Fry, who has over a million followers, it wasn’t long before the story was in the mainstream.
Suspicious minds and the freedom and speed of the Internet proved a lethal combination for the libel law specialists Carter-Ruck. By the next morning their name, along with “Guardian” and “Trafigura” (the oil company at the heart of the story) were top “trending” topics on Twitter. The Guardian claimed a victory for free speech.
So what does this mean for the future of press freedom? We’re supposed to be discussing how media regulation can be extended to news and current affairs on the Internet – maybe it should be how the freedom of news and current affairs on the Internet can be extended to other media.
With the current lack of regulation on sites such as Twitter, you could question whether injunctions are still viable. If they aren’t, we could see some major changes emerging in reporting law. On the positive side, the lack of regulation allows freedom of speech and expression. Big companies such as Trafigura will no longer be able to hide behind lawyers, and exposure is more likely.
Witch-hunts
On the negative side, we need to consider ourselves. It’s easy to focus on big companies wrapped up in injunctions, or celebrities filing libel cases, but what about “average” folk? The Internet audience is hungry for information, regardless of how reliable or reputable the source. But if the story involves us, or someone we know, we may not be so quick to jump on the bandwagon of believing everything we read on the Internet.
At present, court cases are covered by strict reporting rules. Journalists can’t speculate on the guilt of a defendant or publish prejudicial information. But what’s to stop a member of the public attending a trial and tweeting anything they like? Technically they’d be in contempt of court, but who’s out there to police it? If it were a high profile case, sensitive information could be tweeted and hitting hundreds of thousands of screens within hours.
The danger of this kind of reporting is that it’s so fast. This can be a benefit, but suppose the information is wrong. Suppose false and damaging information reaches the masses. For whoever’s involved, the harm caused could be irreversible.
Tweets could snowball and become witch-hunts within hours. The speed of which the Trafigura story spread across not only twitter but also blogs and other Internet current affairs outlets was incredible. Referring back to Tasha’s post, stories of a racial ilk could have terrifying consequences.
It may be freedom of speech, but at what cost?
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