Tag Archives: free expression

November 5, 2019 · 9:21 am

Washington Post podcast shows role of JWs in First Amendment rights #MLGriff

MEDIA law students and colleagues will have undoubtedly noticed the Jehovah’s Witnesses pop-up stalls with religious books and magazines outside campuses and public transport stops, staffed by followers passively promoting their religion.

Yet few would realise the important role this religious group has played in cementing First Amendment rights in the United States, with a ripple effect for freedom of religion and free expression internationally.

That story is central to Episode 16 of the acclaimed Washington Post podcast ‘Constitutional’, available free here.

It uses the voices of constitutional experts and those who lived through the period to explain how a series of cases brought to the US Supreme Court by the Jehovah’s Witnesses forged the interpretations of the First Amendment that laid the platform for religious and media freedom – and free expression more generally – today.

More than 20 cases were brought in the midst of the Second World War. The religion lost the first two major cases, related to proselytising in public and the right of their children to refuse to salute the US flag at school.

But within two years the Supreme Court had overturned that decision, giving the First Amendment precedence over many other rights.

It is a compelling narrative and particularly well produced, and recommended listening for media law students.

Australia’s High Court has chosen to take a narrower approach to freedom of speech and religion in its interpretation of what it has called an ‘implied freedom to communicate on matters of politics and government’. In a comparable case in 2013, it declined a religious group’s attempt to use that implied freedom to proselytise in the centre of Adelaide.

Caleb and Samuel Corneloup were evangelical members of the fundamentalist ‘Street Church’, who preached in Adelaide’s busy Rundle Mall in a loud, animated and sometimes confronting style. Adelaide City Council tried to stop them, by using a by-law prohibiting anyone preaching or distributing printed matter on any road to any bystander or passer-by without permission.

The High Court majority held that the Local Government Act empowered the council to make the by-laws. They ‘were a valid exercise of the Council’s statutory power to make by-laws for the good rule and government of the area, and for the convenience, comfort and safety of its inhabitants’.

Although they ‘burdened political communication, they did not infringe the implied constitutional freedom’ because they served a legitimate end in a manner compatible with our system of representative and responsible government, the High Court said (Pearson & Polden, 2019)

[See Attorney-General (SA) v Corporation of the City of Adelaide [2013] HCA 3 (27 February 2013), <www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinodisp/au/cases/cth/HCA/2013/3.html>. ]

Disclaimer: While I write about media law and ethics, nothing here should be construed as legal advice. I am an academic, not a lawyer. My only advice is that you consult a lawyer before taking any legal risks.

© Mark Pearson 2019 – the moral right of the author has been asserted.

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Filed under censorship, First Amendment, free expression, freedom of religion, journalism, journalism education, media ethics, Media freedom, media law, Media regulation, Press freedom, suppression

Tagged as censorship, First Amendment, free expression, freedom to communicate, high court, Jehovah's Witnesses, journalism, journalism education, Journalist's guide to media law, law, mark pearson, media, media law, press freedom, religious freedom, Supreme Court

October 25, 2019 · 11:56 am

A mindful approach to introducing defamation to students #MLGriff

By MARK PEARSON Follow @Journlaw

Colleagues from Griffith University gathered for a celebration of teaching and learning this week and I had the honour of presenting an open class session.

The forum was called ‘Teaching Using Engaging and Empowering Pedagogies’ and my class was titled ‘Practising mindfulness in the tertiary classroom’.

It was an attempt at putting into practice some of the research we have been undertaking in this space in recent years.

For the research underpinning it, please see:

Pearson, M., McMahon, C., O’Donovan, A. and O’Shannessy, D. (2019), ‘Building journalists’ resilience through mindfulness strategies’. Journalism. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1464884919833253

Pearson, M., McMahon, C., and O’Donovan, A. (2018) ‘Potential benefits of teaching mindfulness to journalism students’. Asia Pacific Media Educator (December). 28:2: https://doi.org/10.1177/1326365X18800080

You should get the gist of the mindfulness-based activities involved from the slide show captured below.

Enjoy.

© Mark Pearson 2019 – the moral right of the author has been asserted.

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Filed under defamation, Eightfold Path, journalism, journalism education, media ethics, media law, mindful journalism, online education, reflective practice, social media

Tagged as defamation, emotion, ethics, free expression, freedom to communicate, interventions, journalism, Journalist's guide to media law, law, mark pearson, media, media law, meditation, mindful journalism, mindful teaching, mindfulness, mindfulness pedagogy, professional values, reflective practice, teaching and learning, trauma

August 8, 2019 · 9:03 am

Australian metadata laws put confidential interviews at risk, with no protections for research

By MARK PEARSON Follow @Journlaw

Interviews from a range of sensitive research topics may be at risk. These include immigration, crime and corruption.
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EACH year, academics and students make countless applications for research ethics approval, based on the promise of confidentiality to their interview subjects. Interviewees sometimes offer academic researchers information that might be self-incriminating or might jeopardise the rights and liberties of others they’re discussing.

But Australia’s metadata retention laws can lead to the identification and even incrimination of the very people whose identities academic researchers have promised to keep secret for their work.

Imagine, for instance, a criminologist conducting a project examining white collar crime in banking and financial services. The academic’s confidential interviews with former company directors and executives might elicit specific and revealing answers. It could lead to potential redundancy or even jail time, depending on their vulnerability and culpability.

Under the metadata laws, government agencies make hundreds of thousands of requests to Australian telcos each year for their customers’ phone and internet communications metadata.

For the criminologist, this means relevant agencies can ask telcos to access his or her metadata in the form of call records and computer IP addresses. This means they can identify whether a person of interest has been in communication with the researcher and is the possible source of incriminating material. Other investigations and legal steps might then follow.

Interviews about a range of sensitive research topics may be at risk. These include immigration, crime and corruption, national security, policing, politics, international relations and policy.

The impact of metadata laws on journalists and their sources have been well documented. But we can only wonder how many people will agree to participate in academic research if they are made fully aware of the real potential of being identified by investigators.

Interested?

READ my full article in The Conversation.

© Mark Pearson 2019 – the moral right of the author has been asserted.

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Filed under free expression, journalism, journalism education, media ethics, Media freedom, media law, Media regulation, national security, open justice, Press freedom, sub judice, suppression, terrorism

Tagged as academic freedom, Australian media, free expression, freedom to communicate, gags, human research ethics, journalism, journalism education, Journalist's guide to media law, law, mark pearson, media, media law, national security, Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, press freedom, research ethics

August 1, 2019 · 1:01 pm

Submission to inquiry shows journalism educators and students lack metadata source protection

By MARK PEARSON Follow @Journlaw

Australian journalists have a narrow and inadequate protection under national security laws from government agencies accessing their metadata to discover the identity of their confidential sources.

I helped the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA) prepare a parliamentary committee submission that explains journalism educators and journalism students do not even qualify for that low level of protection, leaving their confidential sources open to revelation.

Our submission now sits with several others on the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security site here.

We have asked that legislators focus on the public interest journalism involved when awarding such defences and protections rather than focussing simply on whether someone is a ‘journalist‘ – an occupation and term difficult to define in the modern era – and used as the default for the rare privileges given.

We have proposed that

existing and proposed protections for ‘journalists and media organisations’ be extended to apply to the research and outputs of journalism educators and their students when they are engaged in ‘public interest journalism’, whether or not they are paid to work as journalists and whether or not their work is published by a ‘media organisation’ in its traditional sense.

We have also asked that the Commonwealth lead a reform initiative to unify all state, territory an Commonwealth media laws across a range of publication restrictions to do away with anachronistic inconsistencies and introduce a public interest journalism defence or exemption so that courts are prompted to balance the various interests at stake before issuing a warrant against a journalist or taking criminal action.

The Committee is now entering the phase of public hearings. See their site here.

© Mark Pearson 2019 – the moral right of the author has been asserted.

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Tagged as Australian media, free expression, freedom to communicate, gags, journalism, journalism education, Journalist's guide to media law, law, mark pearson, media, media law, national security, Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, press freedom

July 1, 2019 · 11:00 am

Mindfulness strategies explained at Asian Media conference

By MARK PEARSON Follow @Journlaw

Our work on mindfulness-based meditation in the journalism education pedagogy was presented to the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) conference in Bangkok last month to an enthusiastic audience.

Here is the abstract of our presentation for interested blog readers.

“Mindful journalism in action: applications for resilience, learning and ethics”, presented at AMIC Bangkok, June 17, 2019

Mark Pearson, Griffith University

Cait McMahon, Dart Centre Asia Pacific

Analise O’Donovan, Griffith University

The term ‘mindful journalism’ – coined in 2013 (Pearson, 2013) and theorised in 2014 and 2015 (Pearson, 2014; Gunaratne et. al, 2015) – shares some features with other modern ‘journalisms’ (‘solutions’ (Solutions Journalism Network, 2016), ‘peace’ (Lynch, 2010) and ‘inclusive’ (Rupar & Pesic, 2012)). However, it is distinguished by the fact that it includes elements of secular Buddhist approaches to mindfulness-based meditation and ethics (Pearson, 2014; Gunaratne et. al, 2015).

This paper uses a recently released conceptual map (Pearson et. al., 2019) to explain the potentialities of mindful journalism to strengthen journalism students’ resilience, deepen their learning, and shore up their moral compasses as they enter occupations where their work can expose them to trauma (Drevo, 2016) and industry disruption can subject them to stress, burnout and other mental health challenges (O’Donnell, 2017). It details some key ways mindful journalism (and mindfulness-based meditation) have been introduced to the curriculum and pedagogy in a media law course, with a strong emphasis upon emotional and situational analysis of media law dilemmas, as an alternative to a black-letter style of teaching media law cases, legislation and topics (Pearson et. al, 2018). The approach offers a useful extension to problem-based learning and provides the tools by which educators can encourage their students to engage in ‘reflective practice’ or ‘reflection in action’ by which they can purposively reflect upon their learning when confronted with new ethical or technological dilemmas (Schön, 1987).

Students and journalists are equipped with a toolkit of techniques for inward reflection which they can use to assess their thought processes, emotional state, situation, ethics and learning. The approach is in accord with the research on metacognition in psychology and education (Flavell, 1976; Tarricone, 2011) which has found that reflection upon one’s thinking, knowledge and experiences can deepen learning and – we argue – in a mindful journalism context can help engage in professional conduct with both wisdom and compassion. It also builds on the research in a range of occupations showing the potential for mindfulness-based meditation in improving resilience which can help minimise the risks of post-traumatic stress disorder, stress and burnout (Chaukos et al., 2017; Hölzel et al., 2011; Keng et al., 2011; Trammel (2015)).

© Mark Pearson 2019 – the moral right of the author has been asserted.

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Tagged as emotion, ethics, free expression, freedom to communicate, interventions, journalism, Journalist's guide to media law, law, mark pearson, media, media law, meditation, mindful journalism, mindful teaching, mindfulness, mindfulness pedagogy, moral injury, professional values, reflective practice, trauma

June 5, 2019 · 11:36 am

Rare criminal defamation charge in Queensland – #MLGriff

By MARK PEARSON Follow @Journlaw

QUEENSLAND police have charged a Sunshine Coast man with criminal defamation under a rarely used provision of the Criminal Code 1899.

They will allege he distributed pamphlets to neighbourhood homes claiming a former associate was a paedophile.

As Lord Denning, in the 1977 Goldsmith case, said, ‘A criminal libel is so serious that the offender should be punished for it by the state itself. He should either be sent to prison or made to pay a fine to the state itself’ (at 485).

As we explain in the sixth edition of The Journalist’s Guide to Media Law (Pearson and Polden, Allen & Unwin, 2019, pp 298-299), instances of criminal defamation usually arise between ordinary citizens rather than in the media.

Examples include the Wineries case (1998), where a disgruntled businessman penned a letter, purportedly from his business partner’s wife, in which she described her husband as someone who ‘engages in adultery, deception, taxation fraud and is a confidence trickster’ who could be ‘compared to the worst, most infectious, bacterial parasite which can only be found at the bottom of the most unhygienic sewage scum swamp’.

The man sent the letter to at least one South Australian winery and pleaded guilty to criminal defamation.

In 2001, a quadriplegic woman and her mother were charged with six counts of criminal defamation after they allegedly posted notices accusing townsfolk of perjuring themselves in her compensation claim against the local council and its swimming pool operators (Quadriplegic case, 2001). Police later dropped the charges.

Horse racing identities Robert and William Waterhouse prosecuted the producer and reporter of an ABC Four Corners program. The NSW Director of Public Prosecutions eventually stepped in to prevent the defamation prosecutions from proceeding because the defence of qualified privilege was going to be available (Waterhouse case, 1988).

The most famous instance in Australia was the politically motivated prosecution of leftist author Frank Hardy for criminal libel over his volcanic first novel Power Without Glory in August 1950, which he successfully defended.

Sadly, criminal defamation and seditious libel have often been used as political weapons against opposition groups and the media in many small Commonwealth countries.

For media law geeks, the Queensland legislation reads as follows:

—–

CRIMINAL CODE 1899 – SECT 365

Criminal defamation

365 Criminal defamation

(1) Any person who, without lawful excuse, publishes matter defamatory of another living person (the
“relevant person” )—

(a) knowing the matter to be false or without having regard to whether the matter is true or false; and

(b) intending to cause serious harm to the relevant person or any other person or without having regard to whether serious harm to the relevant person or any other person is caused;

commits a misdemeanour.

Penalty—

Maximum penalty—3 years imprisonment.

(2) In a proceeding for an offence defined in this section, the accused person has a lawful excuse for the publication of defamatory matter about the relevant person if, and only if, subsection (3) applies.

(3) This subsection applies if the accused person would, having regard only to the circumstances happening before or at the time of the publication, have had a relevant defencefor the publication if the relevant person had brought civil proceedings for defamation against the accused person.

(4) The prosecution has the burden of negativing the existence of a lawful excuse if, and only if, evidence directed to establishing the excuse is first adduced by or on behalf of the accused person.

(5) Whether the matter complained of is capable of bearing a defamatory meaning is a question of law.

(6) Whether the matter complained of does bear a defamatory meaning is a question of fact.

(7) A person can not be prosecuted for an offence defined in this section without the consent of the director of public prosecutions.

(8) In this section—
“defamatory” has the meaning that it has in the law of tort (as modified by the Defamation Act 2005 ) relating to defamation.
“modified statutory defence of justification” means the defence stated in the Defamation Act 2005 , section 25 as if that section provided that it is a defence to the publication of defamatory matter if the defendant proves that—

(a) the defamatory imputations carried by the matter of which the relevant person complains are substantially true; and

(b) it was for the public benefit that the publication should be made.

“publish” has the meaning that it has in the law of tort (as modified by the Defamation Act 2005 ) relating to defamation.
“relevant defence” means—

(a) a defence available under the Defamation Act 2005 other than—

(i) the statutory defence of justification; or

(ii) the statutory defence of failure to accept reasonable offer; or

(b) the modified statutory defence of justification; or

(c) a defence available other than under the Defamation Act 2005 , including under the general law.

“statutory defence of failure to accept reasonable offer” means the defence stated in the Defamation Act 2005 , section 18 (1) .
“statutory defence of justification” means the defence stated in the Defamation Act 2005 , section 25 .

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© Mark Pearson 2019

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Filed under defamation, free expression, journalism, media law, Media regulation

Tagged as Australian media, criminal defamation, criminal libel, defamation, defamation defences, free expression, journalism, Journalist's guide to media law, justification, law, mark pearson, media, media law, truth

May 3, 2019 · 12:47 pm

Building mindfulness into the online media law curriculum

By MARK PEARSON Follow @Journlaw

Our Arts Education and Law group at Griffith University held a learning and teaching symposium on the Gold Coast this week.

I was invited to speak on my incorporation of mindfulness into the curriculum and pedagogy, and to explain how I have been using a single course site to service on-campus and online students in a single cohort.

Here is a PDF file of my presentation for educators and students who might be interested in the approach.

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Filed under free expression, journalism, journalism education, media ethics, Media freedom, media law, Media regulation, mindful journalism, online education, reflective practice, social media

Tagged as free expression, freedom to communicate, journalism, Journalist's guide to media law, law, mark pearson, media, media law, meditation, mindful journalism, mindful teaching, mindfulness, mindfulness pedagogy, reflective practice

March 13, 2019 · 1:32 pm

Vale Shelton Gunaratne

By MARK PEARSON Follow @Journlaw

Esteemed journalism education colleague Emeritus Professor Dhavalasri Shelton Abeywickreme Gunaratne died in Minnesota on March 8.

Emeritus Professor Shelton Gunaratne

Many journalism educators knew Shelton through his active membership of the (then) Journalism Education Association during and after his term at Central Queensland University from 1976-1985, where he had been the founding lecturer in journalism at what was then known as the Capricornia Institute of Advanced Education (CIAE). He was later appointed professor of mass communications at Minnesota State University Moorhead.

Shelton was an active member of numerous international journalism and communication organisations, including the AEJMC, ICA, IAMCR and AMIC – which in 2016 awarded him the AMIC Asia Communication Award for 2016 in recognition of his “ground-breaking scholarship and intellectual contribution to Asian media and communication research.”

I am particularly indebted to Shelton for his mentorship on the relationship between journalism and Buddhist ethics and phenomenology, which he introduced to the literature with The Dao of the Press : A Humanocentric Theory (Hampton Press, 2005) – a deeply theoretical and cerebral exploration of the inter-connectedness of all things, modelling the media’s role in that process.

He kindly invited me to co-edit (with his former PhD student Sugath Senarath) our book Mindful Journalism and News Ethics in the Digital Era: A Buddhist Approach (Routledge, 2015). That project continues, and I acknowledge his input into my work as my mentor and friend.

The author (right) with his mentor, Emeritus Professor Shelton Gunaratne, at the AEJMC convention in Minneapolis in 2016

I spoke on the phone with his widow Yoke-Sim who had loyally nursed him through the final stages of Parkinson’s Disease. She reported that Shelton was sharp to the very end.

Shelton believed strongly in the ripple effect of one’s actions upon others, and I know his intellectual outputs will have a lasting impact upon journalism and mass communication scholarship, educators and students.

For the information of US colleagues, a memorial service has been organized for March 15 (Friday) at Minnesota State University Moorhead, Comstock Memorial Union 205 between 6-8 p.m. An almsgiving (dania) will be held at the Gunaratne residence (3215 Village Green Drive, Moorhead, MN 56560) on March 16.

RIP Shelton, and thanks for your legacy.

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Tagged as Buddhist ethics, ethics, free expression, journalism, mark pearson, media, meditation, mindful journalism, mindful teaching, mindfulness, Shelton Gunaratne, Sri Lanka, the Dao of the Press

March 1, 2019 · 11:43 am

Building journalists’ resilience through mindfulness strategies: article published in ‘Journalism’

By MARK PEARSON Follow @Journlaw

Our article on the potential applications for mindfulness-based meditation in journalism has now been published in the top-ranked international academic journal Journalism.

The publication is the fruit of more than two years of project collaboration with my colleagues from Griffith University (Professor Analise O’Donovan) and the Dart Centre Asia Pacific (Dr Cait McMahon OAM). Co-author Dustin O’Shannessy provided valuable research assistance and co-authorship.

Here is the abstract for the article, with the full text available via the Sage site (best accessed via your library if you are a student or academic):

Pearson, M., McMahon, C., O’Donovan, A., & O’Shannessy, D. (2019). Building journalists’ resilience through mindfulness strategies. Journalism. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884919833253

Mindfulness-based meditation has earned its place in a variety of settings after studies reporting the benefits of mindfulness-based interventions for the treatment of a range of psychological and health disorders and for building resilience and well-being in a variety of occupational groups. In the field of journalism, the realities of journalists’ exposure to trauma while reporting have been well documented. This article is the first to link those areas of research – suggesting that mindfulness-based meditation offers promise to help journalists build resilience to post-traumatic stress. It also presents a conceptual map to theorise the broader potential benefits of journalists using mindfulness-based meditation, including help with industry-related stresses such as job insecurity, coping with emotions and battling potential ‘moral injury’ in reporting. It explains that pedagogical approaches for equipping journalists with mechanisms for working with their emotions, thoughts and professional values have been lacking. Some media organisations and universities have experimented with meditation practice for a range of reported reasons, but evidence-based research into the efficacy of such programmes for journalists is overdue. This article bridges the knowledge gap that brings together mindfulness-based meditation practice, journalists’ resilience and well-being, and the potential for enhanced work practice.

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February 14, 2019 · 2:35 pm

Introducing a mindful approach to media law education

By MARK PEARSON Follow @Journlaw

I spoke last week at the Professional Futures Conference at the Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University, on my approach to using mindfulness in media law classes.

The abstract for the presentation explained the topic:

Mindfulness can be defined and adopted in many ways in the teaching of media law. This paper outlines the basic principles and explains the likely benefits for participants in learning, teaching and research, detailing some of the key research underpinning the field and offering some examples of its application in media law. The author explains his applications of mindful reflective practice in both his leading media law textbook and in his media law course, which offers the potential to strengthen graduates’ resilience, deepen their learning, and shore up their moral compasses as they enter occupations where their work can expose them to trauma and the industry disruption can subject them to stress, burnout and other mental health challenges.

For those interested, I reproduce the slides from the presentation here: