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These cases are from the lawindexpro database. They are now being transferred to the swarb.co.uk website in a better form. As a case is published there, an entry here will link to it. The swarb.co.uk site includes many later cases.  














Media - From: 1960 To: 1969

This page lists 8 cases, and was prepared on 02 April 2018.

 
Attorney-General v Mulholland [1963] 1 All ER 767; [1963] 2 QB 477
1963
CA
Lord Denning MR
Media, Legal Professions
The court rejected a claim for protection from disclosure of matters passing between journalists and their sources: "it is said that however these questions were and however proper to be answered for the purpose of this inquiry, a journalist has a privilege by law entitling him to refuse to give his sources of information" and "It seems to me that the journalists put the matter much too high. The only profession that I know which is given the privilege from disclosing information to a court of law is the legal profession, and then it is not the privilege of the lawyer but of his client. Take the clergyman, the banker or the medical man. None of these is entitled to refuse to answer when directed by a judge. Let me not be mistaken. The judge will respect the confidences which each member of these honourable professions receives in the course of it, and will not direct him to answer unless not only it is relevant but also it is a proper and, indeed, necessary question in the course of justice to be put and answered. A judge is the person entrusted, on behalf of the community, to weigh these conflicting interests - to weigh on the one hand the respect due to confidence in the profession and on the other hand the ultimate interest of the community in justice being done or, in the case of a tribunal such as this, in a proper investigation being made into these serious allegations. If a judge determines that the journalist must answer, then no privilege will avail him to refuse."
1 Citers


 
Attorney-General v Clough [1963] 1 All ER 420; [1963] 1 QB 773
1963

Lord Parker CJ
Media, Litigation Practice
The court declined to recognise any right of the media to protect their sources from disclosure of identity where disclosure was in the public interest.
Lord Parker CJ said: "it . . would remain open to this court to say in the special circumstances of any particular case that public policy did demand that the journalist should be immune".
1 Citers



 
 The British Broadcasting Corporation v Johns (HM Inspector of Taxes); CA 5-Mar-1964 - [1965] Ch 32 CA; [1964] EWCA Civ 2; [1964] 41 TC 471; (1964) 43 ATC 38; [1964] 1 All ER 923; [1964] 2 WLR 1071; [1964] TR 45; [1964] RVR 579; [1964] 10 RRC 239

 
 Initial Services Ltd v Putterill; CA 1967 - [1967] 3 All ER 145; [1968] 1 QB 396
 
Olivier v Buttigieg [1967] 1 AC 115
1967
PC
Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest
Constitutional, Media
(Malta) Following the condemnation by the Archbishop of Malta of a weekly newspaper the ‘Voice of Malta’, the entry into hospitals and branches of his department of newspapers condemned by the church authorities was “strictly forbidden”. Held: On the basis of the provisions of section 14 of the Constitution even if the prohibition did not “prevent” the editor from imparting ideas and information yet it quite plainly “hindered” him in so doing and was an interference. The very purpose and intention of the prohibition was to hinder such imparting. The prohibition was imposed in order to aid the condemnation of the church authorities. The prohibition did not prevent government employees from buying and possessing and reading the ‘Voice of Malta’ at all such times as would not involve their having a copy in their possession while on government premises. But that said only that the most that the Minister thought that he could do was not effective to prevent government employees from reading the ‘Voice of Malta’ if any of them were determined to do so.
1 Citers



 
 Regina v Savundranayagan and Walker; CACD 1968 - [1968] 3 All ER 439; [1968] 52 Cr App R 637
 
Regina v Kray [1969] 53 Cr App R 412
1969
CACD
Lawton J
Criminal Practice, Media
Ronald Kray had been convicted of murder on 4th March 1969, and on 15th April 1969 he and a number of others were facing a second indictment charging them with murder and other offences. His counsel sought to challenge prospective jurors for cause on the ground that the previous trial had been extensively reported, and that prejudice to Kray resulting therefrom would be likely to influence the minds of the jurors in the second trial. Held: Lawton J confirmed the right to report the first trial and said: "What is more, the mere fact that a newspaper has reported a trial and a verdict which was adverse to the person subsequently accused ought not in the ordinary way to produce a case of probable bias against jurors empanelled in a later case." and "The situation, however, is, in my judgment, entirely different when newspapers, knowing that there is going to be later trial, dig up from the past of the convicted who have to meet further charges discreditable allegations which may be either fact or fiction, and those allegations are then publicised over a wide area. This does, in my judgment, lead to a prima facie presumption that anybody who may have read that kind of information might find it difficult to reach a verdict in a fair-minded way. It is, however, a matter of human experience, and certainly a matter of the experience of those who practise in the criminal courts, first, that the public's recollection is short, and, secondly, that the drama, if I may use that term, of a trial almost always has the effect of excluding from recollection that which went before. A person summoned for this case would not, in my judgment, disqualify himself merely because he had read any of the newspapers containing allegations of the kind I have referred to; but the position would be different if, as a result of reading what he had, his mind had become so clogged with prejudice that he was unable to try the case impartially."
1 Citers


 
Fraser v Evans [1969] 1 QB 349
1969
CA
Lord Denning MR
Defamation, Media
The law of confidence is based on the moral principles of loyalty and fair dealing. An injunction was sought to restrain an intended publication: "The court will not restrain the publication of an article, even though it is defamatory, when the defendant says he intends to justify it or to make fair comment on a matter of public interest. That has been established for many years ever since Bonnard v. Perryman. The reason sometimes given is that the defences of justification and fair comment are for the jury, which is the constitutional tribunal, and not for a judge. But a better reason is the importance in the public interest that the truth should out. There is no wrong done if it is true, or if [the alleged libel] is fair comment on a matter of public interest. The court will not prejudice the issue by granting an injunction in advance of publication." and iniquity] is merely an instance of just cause or excuse for breaking confidence."
1 Cites

1 Citers


 
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