Tag Archives: mark pearson

May 5, 2016 · 12:33 pm

Ethical lessons from the 60 Minutes abduction saga

International readers of this blog might be unaware of the national debate in Australia over the involvement of an Australian 60 Minutes television current affairs crew in last month’s abduction of two children in Lebanon who were the subject of a parental custody dispute.

The Australian mother of the child – Sally Faulkner – and the reporter Tara Brown and her three crew were jailed for two weeks along with the alleged abduction contractor Adam Whittington who remained in jail seeking bail this week.

The Nine Entertainment Company announced an investigation into the circumstances surrounding its flagship current affairs program’s involvement in the failed abduction attempt.

Following that announcement (April 21, 2016) ABC Gold Coast’s Matt Webber interviewed me about the ethical dimensions of the saga.

Here is the recording of that interview. [Transcription below by Virginia Leighton-Jackson].

Interview with ABC Gold Coast’s Matt Webber

Matt Webber: Let’s concentrate on the Nine Network for now. What are the main questions it needs to answer?

Mark Pearson (@journlaw): Well Matt, I think in your introduction you started to hit upon the main questions, and I think they’re questions that need [answering] – I mean hindsight is a wonderful thing and it’s very easy for an academic like me to be looking at this in hindsight and saying all the things that should have been done. But the sorts of questions that you were just asking [are relevant] – Who is involved? Who are the stakeholders? Who are those who might get hurt through such a story? The first thing Channel Nine should be doing, I believe, is setting up accountable systems where those questions are actually asked before stories are embarked upon. And that involves…

MW: Are we naive to think that wouldn’t happen?

…

MP: I don’t think so; I think people would get carried away, and particularly in a highly emotionally charged story like a custody battle it’s very easy to hear one party’s side of the story. Another issue here is of course is the simple fact of obeying laws. Now, there seems to be like a cultural view that has come through this story that going to another place, the ‘other’, a place like Lebanon, excuses journalists from doing what would be absolutely illegal for them to be doing here in Australia. I mean only a couple of years ago one of the leading news stories was a custody battle over children in Queensland where the Italian father had won custody of the children, and the family – the grandparents and the mother – were fighting the order of the court that the children be taken back to Italy. What if that had happened in that case? Just say the order had gone the other way and the father and an Italian TV crew was here and the children were grabbed on the streets of the Gold Coast and taken, and the plan was to take them to a boat at Southport, and somehow the TV crew had helped fund the abduction. Can people imagine what would have happened there? So what Channel Nine needs to be asking is what is going on there culturally in their mindset about these sorts of stories to think that it’s okay to do that in Lebanon, but it’s not okay to do it in Australia. What’s their view of another country’s legal system that allows that to happen?

Now there’s still a lot of this story to come out, facts that we will hear about – you just played a part of the father’s version of whether or not people are being paid or whatever. The truth of all of that will eventually come out. But I think what Channel Nine needs to do is actually follow the privacy guidelines of ACMA, the Broadcasting Authority, but follow them to the letter. They are not obligatory, but they need to actually look at them; where it says that children are more vulnerable, and the privacy of children is something that really needs close scrutiny. And in public interest – what they might call public interest doesn’t outweigh the rights of children to be considered. A story like this has ripple effects across a whole range of stakeholders, and they need to actually have a formalised process which goes through considering the potential impact on all of those involved – including in this case, the news crew.

MW: Indeed. Mark Pearson, a professor in journalism at Griffith University. Often ‘journalistic ethics’ is a pair of words that is tossed around fairly liberally. The Code of Ethics that journalists need to adhere to, are they sufficiently aware of it? Or are they far too ignorant of it, either wilfully or otherwise?

MP: Well, journalists do know about the Code of Ethics, and most journalists these days have been through some journalism program, like a degree or whatever and have learned about the Code of Ethics. But the big problem with the Australian journalists’ Code of Ethics, and most others, is that there is a whopping ‘get-out’ clause. What it says is that all of these are things that should be strived for, but if the public interest, or if the story is of such public concern then that excuses journalists, outweighing those ethical considerations. But it does make specific reference to chequebook journalism – now I’m not saying that’s happened in this case, is it chequebook journalism to help fund an operation? Well, that’s something we’ll be able to discuss once more facts come out. But also things like dealing with children and the vulnerable, and thinking of those potential implications.

So I think it’s more than just journalists’ ethics: it’s a basic moral code that most humans think twice before they do something that is related to or can impact badly on children’s lives. And so if anything comes of this, I would hope that people take special care, and newsrooms implement practices that ring extra alarm bells if there are going to be children involved in any story.

MW: What about those who will argue that look, commercial television is, particularly commercial TV Current Affairs, is a wild and woolly old world, boundaries will always be pushed; that’s the nature of capitalism in many regards. This shouldn’t come as any surprise that this sort of thing is happening. What do you say to those types?

MP: Well if there is a commercial or a capitalism argument for breaching ethics I think you can counter that with another equally commercial or capitalist argument: and that is the only thing that journalism has left these days, compared with its internet rivals, compared with the jungle of news breakers out there who might be citizen journalists or people doing it simply for a commercial imperative, the only thing that we have remaining to sell news is credibility and respect in the community. And that comes through having an ethical code that journalists adhere to. I think 60 Minutes has lost a lot of credibility out of this, and I think Channel Nine will be reviewing that because there is a commercial loss involved when you’ve overstepped the mark and you lose respect in the eyes of the community. 60 Minutes used to be a wonderful news brand, and Channel Nine will be asking what’s happened to that in the wake of this episode.

MW: Interesting observations, Mark Pearson, I really appreciate your time. Thank you.

MP: Thanks Matt

MW: Mark Pearson, Professor of Journalism and Social Media at Griffith University’s School of Humanities (Languages, and Social Science).

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RELATED:

Our book Mindful Journalism and News Ethics in the Digital Era: A Buddhist Approach (Shelton Gunaratne, Mark Pearson and Sugath Senarath eds; Routledge, NY, 2015) explored the possibilities of applying mindfulness techniques to journalism practice.

Interested? You can listen to my 10 minute interview on Radio National’s Media Report here.

See also my account of the basic principles of mindful journalism in the journal Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics, and the editors have been kind enough to make that article available for free viewing as a feature item on their website here. You might also want to explore some of their other fascinating articles on media ethics here and perhaps subscribe.

———–

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.

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Tagged as 60 minutes, abduction, Buddhist journalism, communication ethics, communication law, defamation, ethics, law, mark pearson, media, media law, Media Report, mindful journalism, mindfulness, privacy, Radio National, Right Speech

February 27, 2016 · 12:07 pm

‘Right Speech’ and media law – mindful journalism as an analytical tool

By MARK PEARSON Follow @Journlaw

I recently wrote an article on the “Right Speech” aspect of mindful journalism for the International Communication Gazette titled ‘Enlightening communication analysis in Asia-Pacific: Media studies, ethics and law using a Buddhist perspective’. Its abstract and link to the full article is available here.

The article backgrounds important critiques of the Western approach to communication studies, and considers how globalized communication and media studies has become, before exemplifying how a secular Buddhist perspective might offer 2,500 year-old analytical tools that can assist with media analysis, law and ethics.

The article proposes the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths and their associated Noble Eightfold Path (magga) can be fruitful tools for informing communication theory and analysis, and media law and ethics.

In media analysis, it suggests the Buddha’s teachings on Right Speech (samma vaca) offer key understandings to assist with the deconstruction of media texts. In media law and ethics, it extends the application of Right Speech principles to comparing defences to libel (defamation) as they have developed in four Western jurisdictions.

Here is a brief extract showing the potential for exploring media law using a Buddhist/mindful journalism framework:

The ultimate contest over media talk and Right Speech happens in the courts when media texts face charges for their criminality or are the subject of civil suits over their alleged infringement on citizens’ rights like copyright, confidentiality and defamation. There is also value in applying a mindful, Buddhist approach to the study of communication and media law. We can hardly reject the teachings of the founder of one of the world’s greatest religions as inappropriate in a communication law context on exclusively secular grounds because that would imply our so-called secular approaches to communication and media theory and ethics have no religious roots. No Western academic could deny deep-seated Abrahamic influences upon the cultural origins of media law and its scholarship. A whole body of literature on the philosophy of science and religion attests to it. In media law and ethics, libertarian approaches to press freedom espoused by the likes of Milton, Mill and Jefferson arose in an era when political, cultural and religious notions of rights were intertwined. For example, the most famous treatise against licensing of the press – Milton’s Areopagitica – was prefaced with an explanation that Moses, David and Paul the Apostle were all learned because they were able to read widely. Milton wrote:

…as good almost kill a Man as kill a good Book; who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature, Gods Image; but hee who destroyes a good Booke, kills reason it selfe, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye (Milton, 1644).

The U.S. Supreme Court cited Areopagitica in the landmark defamation case of New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) 376 US 254, when explaining why it would be counter-productive to move the burden of proving truth to the defendant (NY Times v. Sullivan, Footnote 19). Thus, by only two degrees of separation, we find Judeo-Christian teachings informing a key decision on news media talk in one of the most purportedly secular of institutions – the U.S. Supreme Court. Related to this, as Rolph (2008: 38-43) notes, defamation as the tort used to contest objectionable speech, first arose in England in 1222 in the ecclesiastical (church) courts where it remained a spiritual offence for about four centuries. Damage to a reputation was seen to be an offence to the target’s soul – a right that only God should possess – to be judged only by God’s earthly adjudicators, the clergy. There was even recourse for appeals from English ecclesiastical court judgments to the Pope (Rolph, 2008: 45). From the 16^th century, defamation actions were increasingly brought in the common law courts, with the courts developing a list of allegations with which they would deal, without needing proof of actual damage being caused by the defamation (Morison & Sappideen 1989: 173). Even today the Catechism of the Catholic Church lists ‘detraction’ (essentially gossip – or disclosing ‘another’s faults and failings to persons who did not know them’) as a sin – or an ‘offense against truth’ (Catechism of the Catholic Church, para 2477). Thus, defamation action – the legal action available to those subjected to damaging media talk – has a traceable Christian genealogy.

In this globalised, multi-cultural and multi-jurisdictional Web 2.0 era there should be no reason why the Judeo-Christian lens should have a monopoly on our examination of communication law. A mindful reading of defamation law benefits from a consideration of both Right Speech principles and concepts of necessary truth-telling. While it is far-fetched to expect judges and legislators in the West would turn to Buddhism for the reform of defamation law, an effort to abide by truth-telling and Right Speech principles could operate effectively when professional communicators are attempting to avoid libel litigation when pursuing their stories. Further, they present excellent tools for an alternative analysis.

Analysis of the development of defamation defences in Canada, the UK, Australia and the U.S. benefit from a Buddhist reading. In Grant v. Torstar Corp., 2009 SCC 61, [2009] 3 S.C.R. 640, the Supreme Court of Canada developed a ‘responsible communication’ defence to defamation for matters which might not have been able to be proven absolutely as true, but were still diligently reported and were clearly in the public interest to be aired within the spirit of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protection of free expression. Chief Justice McLachlin summed up the relevant factors of the ‘responsible communication’ defence on a demonstrable matter of public interest in these terms:

seriousness of the allegation

public importance of the matter

urgency of the matter

status and reliability of the source

whether the plaintiff’s side of the story was sought and accurately reported

whether the inclusion of the defamatory material was justifiable

whether a defamatory statement’s public interest lay in the fact that it had been made rather than whether it was truthful

other relevant circumstances

The court drew upon similar criteria to those developed earlier in the UK case of Reynolds v. Times Newspapers Ltd [2001] 2 AC 127 as part of the common law qualified privilege defence and elements of the statutory qualified privilege defence in Australia’s uniform Defamation Acts 2005.

The most significant First Amendment case in recent decades was New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) 376 US 254 where it was ruled that public officials had to meet tough new tests before they could succeed in a defamation action even if the allegations in the article were proven false. It established that plaintiffs who were ‘public officials’ had to prove a media defendant had acted with ‘actual malice’ if they were to win a defamation action, even if the defamatory allegation was untrue. The test has since been expanded to apply to any ‘public figure’— essentially anyone who is well known to the public, has taken on some public role or who has participated voluntarily in some controversy. While the principle has some difficulties in definition and application, it has meant the media in the United States have been free to publish criticism of virtually anyone in the public domain, even if the criticism proves to be unfounded, just so long as they have not acted maliciously or in ‘reckless disregard’ of the truth.

It is possible to implement a Buddhist approach using the Right Speech teachings from the Noble Eightfold Path to conduct an analysis in this area of communication law. The author proposes to do this more thoroughly in future work. However, for the purposes of this argument we might return to the Abhaya Sutta … and contrast these defences as they have been developed in these jurisdictions (Thanissaro, 1997). Crucial to the Canadian ‘responsible communication’ defence and its qualified privilege cousins in the UK and Australia is the extent to which reporters and publishers honestly believe in the truth of the defamatory material published, even though they might not have the firm evidence to prove this in court. They would pass the Buddhist (mindful journalism) test if they had an honest belief the material was “factual, true, beneficial” while perhaps being “unendearing and disagreeable to others”, as long as they had chosen the “proper time” for reporting it (Thanissaro, 1997). However, the U.S. defences driven by the First Amendment takes this liberty a step too far under this schema, because it allows unbeneficial, unendearing and disagreeable material to be published about public figures as long as it has not been done with malice. It also allows for untruthful gossip-mongering, as identified earlier in the Saleyyaka Sutta (Nanamoli, 1994) as ethically problematic. Such analysis shows promise in the field of media law analysis, reform and policy development because it provides a working ethical framework to apply to legislation and the fact scenarios of particular cases.

I’ve also written a shorter account of the basic principles of mindful journalism in the journal Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics, and the editors have been kind enough to make that article available for free viewing as a feature item on their website here. You might also want to explore some of their other fascinating articles on media ethics here and perhaps subscribe.

———–

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Tagged as Buddhism, Buddhist journalism, communication ethics, communication law, Communication theory, Dao of the Press, defamation, Eightfold Path, ethics, First Amendment journalism, law, libel, mark pearson, media, media law, Media Report, mindful journalism, mindfulness, Right Speech, Shelton Gunaratne

November 24, 2015 · 8:41 am

Privacy as a value for democratic societies – Beate Roessler #mediaiplaw

By MARK PEARSON Follow @Journlaw

It is only in the past twenty or so years that the societal value of privacy has become of interest and still more recently that there has been a particular focus on the value of privacy for democracies, University of Amsterdam Professor of Ethics Beate Roessler proposed to the 2015 IP and Media Law Conference at the University of Melbourne Law School today (November 24).

“Privacy protection is necessary not only for individual freedom and autonomy but also for the functioning of the democratic society,” she said.

Professor Beate Roessler from the University of Amsterdam

Beate Roessler is Professor of Ethics at the University of Amsterdam and chair of the Capacity group of Philosophy and Public Affairs. She also chairs its Department of Philosophy. In her keynote address she explored her work examining the difficulty of keeping up privacy standards on social network sites and the role of anonymity in social/political relations and the consequences of the loss of that anonymity.

Professor Roessler pointed to statements by Edward Snowden in 2013 and 2015 as an interesting focus upon the democratic value of privacy, where he had justified his revelations partly upon the contest between the state’s surveillance and the individual citizen’s privacy.

She listed three steps in the conceptualisation of privacy – firstly, the classic conception of Warren and Brandeis as the right to be let alone, the fundamental idea being that the right to freedom is protected by, and dependent upon, the right to privacy.

The second step after Warren and Brandeis was the ‘social dimensions of privacy’.

“The social norms which regulate privacy enable us to play different roles,” she said. “They enable us to play these different roles and have these different relations.

“If I started telling you now about my grandmother I would violate the demand of the role I am playing here. It is not just my autonomy, but it is also the norm itself that regulates our relations.

“Privacy is also a social practice, meaning the norms protect individual privacy and the right is part of the practice.

“Also respect for the privacy of other people is part of the practice. It is part of the deal of the social norms of privacy. The right to privacy and respect is always socially contextualised.

“The idea that we are democratic subjects is also the idea that our privacy is protected.”

She explained that the value of privacy has for the most part of the last hundred years been conceived of in purely individual terms: the protection of privacy being important or even constitutive for the protection of individual freedom and autonomy.

The third step after Warren and Brandeis was the significance of privacy for democracy.

“I want to argue that it is precisely this social and democratic value of privacy which is at stake in the digitized society,” she proposed.

She said events in Paris this month had not changed her mind about the value of privacy in democracy, but did make the issues more challenging to address publicly.

“Political participation is dependent on the protection of privacy,” she said.

The loss of privacy affects all social and political relations between people, she argued.

Although the right to privacy remains important as an individual right, the Snowden revelations have made clear that violations of privacy have immediate impact on our social lives as well as on liberal democracies.

Privacy is under pressure in the digitized society through state surveillance, consumer surveillance, via the ‘internet of things’, and through social network sites with the voluntary sharing of personal data including the self-tracking devices and the quantification of self movement.

“New technologies do have an impact on our relationships, for better or for worse.

“The right idea is to think about what does privacy do in our society, and if that changes how far can we go with that change?”

She used privacy settings as an example of the status of privacy in society: “Standard preferences are public, but privacy is an extra task or an achievement.”

“Our personal data are analysed by companies that are collecting, storing and mining as the default. It is what is happening if we do nothing.

“Forgetting, deleting is an extra task, an achievement.”

Anonymity was important to privacy, but as Snowden revealed our anonymity is not protected any longer.

“Lack of anonymity can cause loss of freedom, harmful for the individual and democratic society,” she said.

She pointed to the use of drones as the next “massive threat”.

She said arguments against anonymity such as accountability and public security did not allow for the fact that neither had increased markedly in recent years with large scale surveillance.

“The threat of a life without the protection of privacy involves the transformation of social and political relations,” she concluded.

“If we have to assume there is no privacy protection any longer in our social relations it means our social relations tend to get homogenized.

“How can I understand myself as a democratic subject if I can’t assume any longer that my privacy is not being protected?

“How do we change and how does society change, when our sense of privacy changes, when we lose the differences in self-presentation, possibilities of political participation, and when we lose the possibilities of control?”

From 2003-2010 Roessler was Socrates-Professor for the Foundations of Humanism at Leiden University. Before, she taught philosophy at the Free University, Berlin, Germany, and at the University of Bremen, Germany. Roessler studied philosophy at Tuebingen, London, Oxford, and Berlin and completed her PhD in 1988 at the Free University Berlin (on theories of meaning in analytic philosophy and hermeneutics). In November and December 2015 she is visiting as a research fellow at University of Melbourne, Melbourne Law School. Her publications include Social Dimensions of Privacy: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (edited with Dorota Mokrosinska, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2015) and The Value of Privacy (Polity Press, 2005).

The full conference program is here. Our paper (Pearson, Bennett and Morton) was titled ‘Mental health and the media: a case study in open justice’ (see earlier blog here) and was presented yesterday (November 23).

Those interested in privacy as a topic might also see my timeline of privacy in Australia here.

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Tagged as Australian media, free expression, journalism, law, mark pearson, media, media ethics, media history, media law, political commentary, press freedom, privacy, privacy law, right to privacy, social media law

November 19, 2015 · 8:41 am

How to challenge a ban on naming a mental health patient

By MARK PEARSON Follow @Journlaw

UTS colleague Associate Professor Tom Morton, ABC lawyer Hugh Bennett and I will deliver a paper in Melbourne next week on our experiences applying to the Mental Health Tribunal of NSW for permission to name a forensic mental health patient in an ABC documentary and in our academic works.

The occasion is the 2015 IP and Media Law Conference, hosted by the Centre for Media and Communications Law at the University of Melbourne Law School, November 23-24. The full program is here. I plan to blog a few of the highlights of the sessions I attend.

Our paper is titled ‘Mental health and the media: a case study in open justice’ and we present on the first morning of the conference. Here is its abstract:

News and current affairs reportage about forensic mental health cases raises a host of competing interests, including the public’s right to know about mental health tribunal processes; a patient’s right to privacy, treatment, and recovery; and victims’ and the broader community’s interest in learning the longer term consequences of a publicised serious criminal act. This article details a case study of the legal processes involved in applications for permissions to identify a forensic mental health patient in NSW in an Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio National Background Briefing documentary ‘The Man Without a Name’ and in subsequent research blogs and scholarly works including this article. It begins by backgrounding the restrictions on publicising mental health tribunal cases in Australia, summarising the case study, examining the specific restrictions applying to the Mental Health Review Tribunal in NSW, detailing the processes followed in the successful application by the authors to name the patient, comparing the case with Australian and British cases, and making some recommendations for further research and reform.

Tom and I recently co-authored an article on the ethics of that same experience in Pacific Journalism Review, titled ‘Zones of silence: Forensic patients, radio documentary, and a mindful approach to journalism ethics’. Here is our abstract. Full contents of the edition and subscription details can be seen here. Reference: Morton, T. and Pearson, M. (2015). Zones of silence: Forensic patients, radio documentary, and a mindful approach to journalism ethics. Pacific Journalism Review, 21(2), 11-32.

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Tagged as ABC, Background Briefing, Buddhism, Buddhist journalism, communication ethics, Eightfold Path, ethics, forensic patients, journalism ethics, law, mark pearson, media, media law, mental health, mindful journalism, mindfulness, NSW Mental Health Act, radio documentary, Right Speech, Shelton Gunaratne, The Man Without A Name, Tom Morton

October 6, 2015 · 2:03 pm

Zones of silence: Forensic patients, radio documentary, and a mindful approach to journalism ethics

By MARK PEARSON Follow @Journlaw

Congratulations to Pacific Journalism Review editors David Robie, Annie Goldson and Barry King on their newly released special edition ‘Documentary Practice in the Asia-Pacific’.

I was honoured to be invited by research colleague Associate Professor Tom Morton from UTS to co-write an article centred upon the law and ethics behind his ABC Background Briefing documentary ‘The Man Without A Name’, broadcast in 2014. In the article we detail the story behind the documentary and the legal and ethical challenges we faced in navigating the publishing restrictions of the NSW Mental Health Act and some related legislation.

PJR Special Edition vol21(2) OP FINAL CORRECTED 685wide_0

Cover of the special Pacific Journalism Review edition Volume 21 (2)

Here is our abstract:

This article explains a collaborative and critically reflective journalism research project stemming from the wish of an incarcerated forensic mental health patient to be named in public communication about his case. The authors are academics and journalists who embarked upon a combination of journalism, legal processes and academic research to win the right to name Patient A in a radio documentary and in academic works—including this journal article and research blogs. As a case study, it explains the theoretical and ethical considerations informing the journalism and the academic research, drawing upon traditions of documentary production, the principle of open justice and the ethical framework of ‘mindful journalism’. It concludes by drawing lessons from the project that might inform future practitioners and researchers embarking upon works of journalism and research involving vulnerable people and a competing set of rights and public interests.

Full contents of the edition and subscription details can be seen here.

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September 4, 2015 · 10:11 am

Mindful journalism in focus on @RNmediareport

By MARK PEARSON Follow @Journlaw

Mindful journalism was the focus of a segment on Radio National’s Media Report (@RNmediareport) this week (September 3, 2015) when I was interviewed by host Richard Aedy (@richardaedy) on the application of Buddhist ethics to reporting.

Interested? You can listen to the 10 minute segment here.

I’ve also written a shorter account of the basic principles in the journal Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics, and the editors have been kind enough to make that article available for free viewing as a feature item on their website here. You might also want to explore some of their other fascinating articles on media ethics here and perhaps subscribe.

I’ve also written an article on the “Right Speech” aspect of mindful journalism for the International Communication Gazette titled ‘Enlightening communication analysis in Asia-Pacific: Media studies, ethics and law using a Buddhist perspective’. Its abstract and link to the full article is available here.

The article begins by assessing the extent to which communication and media studies in Asia and the Pacific has shifted to accommodate non-Western approaches.

Here is a brief extract on that aspect:

In this globalised, multi-cultural and multi-jurisdictional Web 2.0 era there should be no reason why the Judeo-Christian lens should have a monopoly on our examination of communication law. A mindful reading of defamation law benefits from a consideration of both Right Speech principles and concepts of necessary truth-telling. While it is far-fetched to expect judges and legislators in the West would turn to Buddhism for the reform of defamation law, an effort to abide by truth-telling and Right Speech principles could operate effectively when professional communicators are attempting to avoid libel litigation when pursuing their stories. Further, they present excellent tools for an alternative analysis.

Analysis of the development of defamation defences in Canada, the UK, Australia and the U.S. benefit from a Buddhist reading. In Grant v. Torstar Corp., 2009 SCC 61, [2009] 3 S.C.R. 640, the Supreme Court of Canada developed a ‘responsible communication’ defence to defamation for matters which might not have been able to be proven absolutely as true, but were still diligently reported and were clearly in the public interest to be aired within the spirit of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protection of free expression. ..

It is possible to implement a Buddhist approach using the Right Speech teachings from the Noble Eightfold Path to conduct an analysis in this area of communication law. The author proposes to do this more thoroughly in future work. However, for the purposes of this argument we might return to the Abhaya Sutta cited earlier and contrast these defences as they have been developed in these jurisdictions (Thanissaro, 1997). Crucial to the Canadian ‘responsible communication’ defence and its qualified privilege cousins in the UK and Australia is the extent to which reporters and publishers honestly believe in the truth of the defamatory material published, even though they might not have the firm evidence to prove this in court. They would pass the Buddhist (mindful journalism) test if they had an honest belief the material was “factual, true, beneficial” while perhaps being “unendearing and disagreeable to others”, as long as they had chosen the “proper time” for reporting it (Thanissaro, 1997). However, the U.S. defences driven by the First Amendment takes this liberty a step too far under this schema, because it allows unbeneficial, unendearing and disagreeable material to be published about public figures as long as it has not been done with malice. It also allows for untruthful gossip-mongering, as identified earlier in the Saleyyaka Sutta (Nanamoli, 1994) as ethically problematic. Such analysis shows promise in the field of media law analysis, reform and policy development because it provides a working ethical framework to apply to legislation and the fact scenarios of particular cases.

The article applies the ‘Right Speech’ principles of Buddhist ethics to analysis of the Royal family prank call episode which resulted in a High Court appeal in Australia and to a racial discrimination case heard in Australia’s Federal Court over comments on a West Australian news website.

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May 29, 2015 · 3:26 pm

Towards a mindful approach to media law and ethics

By MARK PEARSON Follow @Journlaw

How might we begin to apply Buddhist ethical systems to the analysis of media law and ethics?

I explore this question in an article just published online and to appear in a forthcoming print edition of the International Communication Gazette.

It is titled ‘Enlightening communication analysis in Asia-Pacific: Media studies, ethics and law using a Buddhist perspective’. Its abstract and link to the full article is available here.

The article begins by assessing the extent to which communication and media studies in Asia and the Pacific has shifted to accommodate non-Western approaches.

Here is a brief extract on that aspect:

In this globalised, multi-cultural and multi-jurisdictional Web 2.0 era there should be no reason why the Judeo-Christian lens should have a monopoly on our examination of communication law. A mindful reading of defamation law benefits from a consideration of both Right Speech principles and concepts of necessary truth-telling. While it is far-fetched to expect judges and legislators in the West would turn to Buddhism for the reform of defamation law, an effort to abide by truth-telling and Right Speech principles could operate effectively when professional communicators are attempting to avoid libel litigation when pursuing their stories. Further, they present excellent tools for an alternative analysis.

Analysis of the development of defamation defences in Canada, the UK, Australia and the U.S. benefit from a Buddhist reading. In Grant v. Torstar Corp., 2009 SCC 61, [2009] 3 S.C.R. 640, the Supreme Court of Canada developed a ‘responsible communication’ defence to defamation for matters which might not have been able to be proven absolutely as true, but were still diligently reported and were clearly in the public interest to be aired within the spirit of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protection of free expression. ..

It is possible to implement a Buddhist approach using the Right Speech teachings from the Noble Eightfold Path to conduct an analysis in this area of communication law. The author proposes to do this more thoroughly in future work. However, for the purposes of this argument we might return to the Abhaya Sutta cited earlier and contrast these defences as they have been developed in these jurisdictions (Thanissaro, 1997). Crucial to the Canadian ‘responsible communication’ defence and its qualified privilege cousins in the UK and Australia is the extent to which reporters and publishers honestly believe in the truth of the defamatory material published, even though they might not have the firm evidence to prove this in court. They would pass the Buddhist (mindful journalism) test if they had an honest belief the material was “factual, true, beneficial” while perhaps being “unendearing and disagreeable to others”, as long as they had chosen the “proper time” for reporting it (Thanissaro, 1997). However, the U.S. defences driven by the First Amendment takes this liberty a step too far under this schema, because it allows unbeneficial, unendearing and disagreeable material to be published about public figures as long as it has not been done with malice. It also allows for untruthful gossip-mongering, as identified earlier in the Saleyyaka Sutta (Nanamoli, 1994) as ethically problematic. Such analysis shows promise in the field of media law analysis, reform and policy development because it provides a working ethical framework to apply to legislation and the fact scenarios of particular cases.

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April 27, 2015 · 2:40 pm

Lessons in ‘Right Speech’ and mindful communication in Queensland defamation case

By MARK PEARSON Follow @Journlaw

THE comedians on the Ten network’s ‘The Project’ had some fun with defamation last Friday when they used a fairly sobering Queensland case as the reason to interview me on the basics of that law.

First up, a clarification. Near the end of the segment they seemed to imply quite incorrectly that I am a lawyer which, of course, I am not!

Mark Pearson (@journlaw) interviewed on The Project about defamation 24.4.15 [At 33 mins 15 secs]

There is a serious side to this. The Queensland case they used as the segue to my very rudimentary explanation of defamation law was Sierocki & Anor v Klerck & Ors (No 2) [2015] QSC 092 where Justice Flanagan had ordered a total of $260,000 in damages be awarded to the plaintiff and his company over various Internet slurs against them by his former business partner and others.

The defendants had earlier failed in their attempt to prove the truth of the imputations that the plaintiff was fraudulent; was a conman; had committed adultery; had used illegal drugs; was evil; was a thief; was a liar; and preyed on the innocent and that his company’s services were disreputable; unprofessional and encouraged threatening behaviour. Quite a slur indeed.

The Courier Mail reported earlier that the plaintiff was also suing Google for $2.6 million over its search results linking him to the sites containing those imputations.

The case is interesting for media law students for a range of reasons – the large award of damages, the fact that they were Internet publications, and for the proposed action against Google.

But I find the most instructive lesson is the extent to which a dispute between business partners can escalate so far out of control that one should take to the Internet to cast these kinds of aspersions against the other.

Justice Flanagan noted in the judgment that the cause of the original dispute was unknown, but the result has been enormous financial and emotional cost to all parties.

Our new book Mindful Journalism and News Ethics in the Digital Era: A Buddhist Approach (Shelton Gunaratne, Mark Pearson and Sugath Senarath eds; Routledge, NY) examined some of the causes of such disputes and the damage that language can cause to reputations and relationships.

I take this further in a forthcoming article in a special issue of the academic journal International Communication Gazette, edited by my Mindful Journalism lead editor Shelton Gunaratne.

In that article I examine the religious origins of defamation law and proceed to link it to the Buddhist concept of “Right Speech”, writing:

In this globalised, multi-cultural and multi-jurisdictional Web 2.0 era there should be no reason why the Judeo-Christian lens should have a monopoly on our examination of communication law. A mindful reading of defamation law benefits from a consideration of both Right Speech principles and concepts of necessary truth-telling. While it is far-fetched to expect judges and legislators in the West would turn to Buddhism for the reform of defamation law, an effort to abide by truth-telling and Right Speech principles could operate effectively when professional communicators are attempting to avoid libel litigation when pursuing their stories. Further, they present excellent tools for an alternative analysis.

The basic premise of Right Speech in Buddhism is that words should not be spoken (or written or published) if they are not factual or true, or if they are unbeneficial, unendearing or disagreeable to others. All of these elements seemed to apply in this case, or at least that was the tenor of the judgment. Of course, sometimes hard truths do need to be told, but we need to ensure they are provable as true or that we can operate under some other defence excusing their publication.

The Internet offers inordinate opportunities to those seeking to defame others. This is the latest in a series of judgments demonstrating that even when one side wins a record damages payout for defamation, nobody is really a winner when reputations are damaged for no defensible reason.

We need to look to our moral compass when speaking or writing ill of others and ask whether we have an ethical foundation for doing so.

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April 10, 2015 · 5:22 pm

For those who missed it – the @RNMediaReport story on the Bayley suppression order #auslaw

By MARK PEARSON Follow @Journlaw

As most people were heading off for their Easter vacation, Radio National’s Media Report ran a segment on how we discovered the new edition of our textbook was in breach of a suppression order on the name of Adrian Bayley – the man who murdered Jill Meagher.

My article in The Conversation (excerpted below) explained what happened, and RN Media Report’s Richard Aedy followed it up with this interview last week:

March 27, 2015 blog:

How the Adrian Bayley suppression order forced the reprinting of our new media law book #auslaw ]

It is somewhat alarming when a media law academic finds himself on the wrong side of a media law. But that is exactly what happened to me when I discovered the new edition of our textbook was in breach of a suppression order on the name of Adrian Bayley – the man who murdered Jill Meagher.

One of the manually redacted pages sent out to reviewers before our book was reprinted

Our experience highlights serious problems with the system of suppression orders in the courts today as they try to grapple with the ever-increasing challenge of keeping internet-savvy jurors from having access to reports of the past trials or convictions of the accused.

Victorian County Court judge Sue Pullen issued the suppression order against anyone publishing “any information relating to previous convictions, sentences, or previous criminal cases of the accused”. The orders were lifted on Thursday after Bayley was convicted of raping three other women before he raped and murdered Meagher in September 2012.

On one view, Pullen’s orders constituted a “super injunction” because they suppressed mention of the proceedings – and therefore of the suppression order itself. Perhaps understandably, news of the order had not spread beyond the inner circle of lawyers and mainstream court reporters and editors, mainly in Victoria.

The suppression order only came to my knowledge as a Queensland-based academic when I happened to be sitting on a conference panel in Melbourne with a media lawyer and a judge last year discussing the futility of suppression orders in the modern era.

The media lawyer told the audience of court officers, lawyers, journalists and academics that he had recently appeared in court several times to try to have this particular suppression order overturned – without success. He said he could not be specific about the suppressed identity of the accused (wisely, as representatives of that court were sitting in the audience).

But when he mentioned the notorious crime itself my heart skipped a beat. It dawned on me that our new edition of The Journalist’s Guide to Media Law, which was sitting in the publisher’s warehouse awaiting distribution, was in clear breach of the order. Bayley had been named and linked to the Meagher murder on three pages of the book. He also appeared in its index.

Continue reading the full version of this commentary in The Conversation …

Order through Booktopia at http://www.booktopia.com.au/the-journalist-s-guide-to-media-law-mark-pearson/prod9781743316382.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.

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