Aljazeera puts the record straight on this situation.
This week on The Listening Post, we cast a critical eye on the six-day conflict between Georgia and Russia over the disputed territory of South Ossetia.
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When Angelina Jolie headed to Nice, France, to unload her two kids, it wasn’t because the doctors there were any better than the U.S. It’s because the privacy laws there forbid photographers from taking publishing her picture, or that of her newborns, without her permission. Knowing those photos would fetch a hefty sum — $14 million, it turns out — she set up camp among the French until she blew.In the United Kingdom, there’s a similar phenomenon going on: “libel tourism,” where lawsuits get filed in British courts over news reports that celebrities and other plaintiffs couldn’t even get on a court docket in their own countries.
That’s because the U.K. has some of the strictest libel laws in the world, if you discount North Korea’s tendency to make anybody who says something questionable disappear.
Plenty of publishers around the world aren’t happy with the British way of doing things, especially because the Internet and global distribution of many publications put their works inside U.K. jurisdiction, opening them up to lawsuits.
But now there’s a tiny organization who’s on their side. Perhaps you heard of it?
The United Nations.
Concerned with a little thing called “human rights,” the U.N.’s committee dedicated to the matter has gone on the record slamming the U.K.’s strict interpretation of libel:
The committee warns that the British libel laws have “served to discourage critical media reporting on matters of serious public interest, adversely affecting the ability of scholars and journalists to publish their work, including through the phenomenon known as libel tourism”.
The case that has provoked the most concern is that of an American researcher, Dr Rachel Ehrenfeld, who was sued in London by a Saudi businessman and his two sons over a book that sold 23 copies over the internet into the UK, where it was never officially published. One chapter of the book was available online.
The action led to the New York state legislature passing legislation to protect writers and publishers working there from defamation judgements in any country that does not give the same same freedom of speech rights as New York and US federal law.
The committee’s report highlights the grey area created by the internet whereby alleged libel can be read in different countries. There is a risk, warns the committee, that restrictive libel laws could affect legitimate international discussion, contrary to article 19 of the covenant on civil and political rights, which guarantees the right to freedom of speech “regardless of borders”.
The UK government has been urged to consider “a so-called ‘public figure’ exception” that would require a would-be claimant to prove actual malice by a publisher or author.
This would apply in cases involving public officials and prominent public figures, as currently exists in the US, where a public figure can only sue for libel if he or she can demonstrate malice, recklessness or indifference to the truth and that the statement is false.
A move like this could quash lawsuits like the one Las Vegas Sands CEO Sheldon Adelson filed against The Daily Mail, or Lisa Marie Pressley suing that same newspaper for calling her fat.
Not that it would do anything for News of the World: Though Formula 1 chief Max Mosley is certainly a public figure, it’d still be illegaly to t say somebody enjoys Nazi-themed S&M sex when he actually just enjoys just regular-themed S&M sex.
Bringing this story full circle, then, is this interesting aside: Ms. Jolie, a celebrity who benefits from Britain’s restrictive libel laws and would likely enjoy keeping them on the books, is an official U.N. ambassador.
[Guardian]
Via Jossip
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So, Paris decided to get in on the action. Why not? If Tyra can do it so can Paris. And where Tyra’s attempt is grotesque, Paris approaches it in a well timed comedic fashion!
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I don’t know about you but this story I find highly disturbing….Maybe it is because it involves that drag queen talk show host, Tyra Banks:
John McCain is going to love this: in what is apparently an inadvertent attempt to further the “Obama is a celebrity” meme, everyone’s favorite slut rehabilitator Tyra Banks has turned up in the pages of next month’s Harper’s Bazaar, dressed as a Michelle Obama-ish First Lady (complete with a Barack-a-like and First Kid). Forget Tyra’s Oprah envy — it’s clear now that Ty-Ty has been taking her social-climbing tips from model-turned-First Lady Carla Bruni. Needless to say, the nation is not smiling with its eyes. Says Page Six (which calls the whole shoot “vaguely unsettling”):
Voguing like a supermodel, Tyra pays homage to Michelle Obama and Jackie Kennedy with pearls, slinky black shift and curly flip, draped against a Barack Obama lookalike and smiling at a tyke playing hide-and-seek à la JFK Jr.
Banks confessed that if she were first lady, her Secret Service code name would be “KMFA: Kiss My Fat Ass.”
We can see it now: Nigel Barker as VP, Miss Jay as Secretary of the Interior, and Mr. Jay as Tyra’s own personal Karl Rove. Sadly for erstwhile Top Model castoff Janice Dickinson, she would be immediately placed on a “do not fly” list, shipped to Gitmo for a special new facial rejuvenation procedure known as “waterboarding.”
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Eva Mendes shed her top in a new commercial for Calvin Klein’s “Secret Obession” perfume. Which, we guess, smells like morning-after hair and mascara clumps. Eva’s commercial was banned in the United States because women’s nipples are evil and belong to Satan and, thus, cannot be shown on TV alongside more important things like knife fights and teenagers having sex under bleachers. We don’t really see this ad as being particularly racy, especially since it appears that Eva is in the throes of a febrile seizure throughout.
(Gaunabee)
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It’s no secret that the websites of traditional news outlets are hunting for pageviews as desperately as, say, gossip blogs. Which explains why CNN.com — normally where we find Anderson Cooper’s transcripts so we can perform our nightly dramatic readings before sleepy time — isn’t so much a gatekeeper of hard news as it is a wet toilet paper magnet of sensational headlines. “Out of a possible 20 ‘news’ items on CNN.com, a full 15 focus on death (usually violent death), crime, weather, religion, or celebrity,” says an author who has an interest in reporting these things. “Of the remaining 5 items, 2 are related to politics, 1 is related to business / entertainment, 1 is science, and 1 is random. In other words, about 80% of news is simply death, weather, or fame.
From: JOSSIP
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From Jezebel:
Michael Grove, the shadow education secretary and a prominent Conservative in England, gave a speech today at a meeting organized by the think tank IPPR condemning lad mags (like Nuts, Zoo, and Maxim) for promoting “instant-hit hedonism” and presenting women as “permanently, lasciviously, uncomplicatedly available.” The result, according to Grove, is that the magazines promote a deterioration of responsibility in young men towards women, leaving British communities with apparently the worst social situation that could ever occur: single-parent families. Yes, lad mags may present a sexist image of women, but is focusing on the importance of “male responsibility” towards women reinforcing sexist and misogynist attitudes towards women or destroying them? (A poll on the website of the Guardian reveals that, as of this morning, 54% of respondents think that lad mags do not “make men feckless”.)Probably the former. Yes, families where both parents are present in the children’s lives are more stable and ultimately create a better environment for children, but Grove is implying that parents need to not only be married for children to thrive, but the man needs to be working and providing (”responsibility”) for his young while the woman stays home and cares for them. Why not promote a society where single mothers can provide for their children on their own? Grove says that the Conservative government will provide a maternity nurse service for families who need help during the first days after childbirth, but there is no mention of this service being available to single mothers (or fathers) who have a newborn. An emphasis is placed on the relationship between the father and mother, implying that they are together.
And what does Grove think of women’s magazines? While he condemns lad mags’ presentation of a “narrow conception of beauty and a shallow approach towards women,” he praises women’s magazines (and their publishers) for addressing their readers “in a mature and responsible fashion.” So, being obsessed with materialism, being fearful of any beauty “imperfection,” and constantly being reminded that the attention of men is necessary to live a happy lifestyle is “mature”? Has this dude ever looked at a women’s magazine?
Lad Mags Linked To ‘Social Ills’ [BBC]
‘Lads Mags’ Condemned Over Images Of Women [Telegraph]
Poll” Do Lad Mags Make Men Feckless? [Guardian]
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This week, we have put together a special broadcast focusing on what’s possibly one of the most debated news trends and one of the most well-known, citizen journalism. Critics call it journalism on the cheap, unskilled hacks putting out stories that are heavy on opinion and light on fact. According to those championing amateur reporters, it is a way to keep mainstream media honest and in some cases, it’s just about the only way to get a story out.
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Turns out Jon Qwelane and the Press Ombudsman of South Africa, Joe Thloloe has a history. In fact it seems as though the two are comrades.
This claim is not made by the gay pressure group, who formally laid charges against Qwelane for his now infamous column, expressing his disdain for gay people but according to Qwelane himself in a column he wrote in 2005:
I remember one Sunday afternoon in Rockville, Soweto, when my close friend and colleague Joe Thloloe and I were leaving what had been a rather heated political rally in Regina Mundi Catholic Church.
The group now plans to appeal the finding made by Thloloe.
More here at the Facebook page of “Appalling Homophobia in our midst!!”
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