#PhoneHacking: #WallStreetJournal #wins #ruling on #reporting #restrictions #US-based #newspaper will be able to report fully report on the #trial of #RebekahBrooks and others without signing written #agreement Share 7 Tweet this Email Lisa OCarroll theguardian, Friday 17 January 2014 13.55 GMT Rebekah Brooks Phone-hacking trial: the Wall Street Journal has won a ruling on reporting restrictions in the case of Rebekah Brooks and others. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images The Wall Street Journal has won a ruling allowing it to fully report on the Rebekah Brooks phone-hacking trial, without having to sign an undertaking that it will abide by reporting restrictions imposed by the judge. This ruling raises the prospect of the New York-based financial newspaper, owned by Rupert Murdochs News Corp, reporting differently in the US and Asia in its print editions to its European edition, available in the UK, and the subsequent risk of this being picked up by the internet. The Wall Street Journal successfully challenged what it deemed an illogical Crown Prosecution Service request to give written agreement to comply with reporting restrictions applying to UK media in exchange for access to prosecution material. The request has been made to all foreign media and those who have signed have been given access to CCTV footage, maps, financial statements, transcripts of police interviews with witnesses and defendants, photos of property seized and witness statements shown to the jury in the Old Bailey trial. Mr Justice Saunders, who is presiding over the trial, said there was strong public interest in enabling both the foreign and national press to report as full and as accurately as possible the proceedings and he could see no good reason why they should not have the documents in the same way as the national press does. I do not consider that the signing of the agreement should be a pre-condition of that supply [of documents], Saunders added. He noted that the Wall Street Journal submit that the requirement to enter into this agreement imposed by the CPS on the foreign media is illogical as it does not apply to UK based media who publish outside the jurisdiction. They also submit that it amounts to an unnecessary restriction on the freedom of the press. Saunders also commented: Such is the power of the internet that everything, wherever it is published, can find its way onto the internet and be available worldwide and more importantly in this country. The inability of domestic courts to control the flow of information on the internet has been apparent in this trial. The attorney general, who was represented by Angus McCullough during the Wall Street Journals application, was of the view that a ruling in favour of the paper would not pave the way for foreign media to publish material or discussions not put before the jury with impunity. There appears to be an assumption made by both Wall Street Journal and the CPS that, if the Wall Street were to publish in a report of the case outside the jurisdiction information, which is subject to reporting restrictions that they would not be in contempt of court, Saunders said. Mr McCullough … did not accept that that proposition was necessarily correct and neither do I. The information is no doubt sent in a report from the court to the local office and from there to America for inclusion in the American or Asian editions. In those circumstances it may well be that a publication of the information takes place in this country. Last October the Wall Street Journal overturned an injunction imposed by Mr Justice Cooke after it published names of individuals mentioned in a draft indictment in a Libor rate fixing trial. The paper described the injunction as a serious affront to press freedom. theguardian/media/2014/jan/17/phone-hacking-trail-wall-street-journal?guni=Network%20front:network-front%20main-3%20Main%20trailblock:Network%20front%20-%20main%20trailblock:Position4
Posted on: Fri, 17 Jan 2014 15:37:23 +0000
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