In this paper, I examine the impact of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms on defamation law in New Zealand. The topic turned out to be a continuation of my previous work on how the common law could be, and is ...

On 30 March 2008, the News of the World in London followed its motto as the fearless advocacy of truth, and published a story headlined: “FI BOSS HAS SICK NAZI ORGY WITH 5 HOOKERS.” Mr Max Mosley, the President of the FIA, ...

Ursula Cheer, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Canterbury, discusses the recent Rio Ferdinand decision, a privacy case from the High Court in the UK.

Today I can’t avoid talking about how the law attempts to deal with hoaxes and pranks in the media that lead to harm, following the shocking outcome of the prank by Mel Greig and Michael Christian, hosts of 2Day FM Radio ...

I want to discuss the very recent decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in the Torstar case. The New Zealand leading case in this area, the Lange case, was significantly influenced by the Canadian Charter and by the ...

I want to talk today about a recent decision of the UK High Court called King v Grundon. This was a defamation decision given extempore, which means an oral judgment given by the judge at the time – live, so to speak, or ...

It has been a typically busy period for New Zealand media law in the year or so under review. In defamation, the High Court decision which appeared to extend the constitutional qualified privilege defence with little ...

I want to talk a bit about a media project that I started work on over the summer, which is part of a larger project the Faculty of Law at Canterbury is carrying out, investigating the many legal issues that have arisen ...

Courts continue to struggle world-wide with the issue of whether journalists should have immunity or privileges preventing them from being compelled to disclose confidential sources. There have been few subpoenas issued ...