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On 18 January 2019, Sheffield Magistrates’ Court acquitted the BBC Asian Network head of news Arif Ansari of breaching the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992 after a reporter named a rape victim live on air. Ansari was the editor of a radio programme when a reporter, Rickin Majithia, revealed in a live news bulletin the identity of a female victim of sexual abuse whilst reporting on the trial of her abuser in February 2018 outside Sheffield Crown Court. Majithia had wrongly assumed that the name read out in court was a pseudonym. Although Majithia was in error, the charge was brought against...

On 19 December 2018, Mr. Justice Nicklin handed down the judgment in Monir v Wood, ordering the defendant, the chairman of a local branch of a political party, to pay GBP 40 000 in damages for a defamatory message sent by a branch member through the branch’s Twitter account. The judgment highlights the potential liability of those who set up social media accounts and then delegate responsibility to others to post on their behalf. The claimant in this action was Zahir Monir, a businessman and Labour activist from Rotherham. He brought libel proceedings against Stephen Wood, the former chairman of...

On 1 November 2018, the Law Commission, an independent body set up by Parliament in 1965 to promote the reform of the law of England and Wales, published its Scoping Report on Abusive and Offensive Online Communications. The Commission reviewed the current criminal law in order to identify any gaps or deficiencies that cause problems in tackling online and social media-based abuse. Terrorism offences, liability of social media platforms, child sexual exploitation offences, online fraud and contempt of court were excluded from the scope of this review. The report analysed the scale of online offending...

The issue concerned the showing of an advertisement for a granola product placed by the Kellogg Marketing and Sales Company (UK) Ltd. The advertisement appeared between episodes of the Mr Bean cartoon. The complainant was the Obesity Health Alliance which argued that it was an ad for a product that was high in fat, salt or sugar (HFSS product) that was advertised in programmes commissioned for, principally directed at or likely to appeal to audiences below the age of 16. As such, it infringed the Broadcasting Committee of Advertising Practice’s (BCAP) Code rules 32.5. and 32.5.1, namely: These...

Channel 5 News, produced by Independent Television News Limited (ITN), was found in breach of rules 5.1 and 5.2 by Ofcom when its newscaster incorrectly stated during its bulletin on the 6th September 2018 that former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia Skripal, who were victims of a Novichok (a nerve agent) attack which occurred in Salisbury, England on 4th March 2018, had died from their poisoning, when in fact they had survived. Furthermore, the news channel had failed to act quickly, taking over a week to broadcast a correction. Rule 5.1 of the Ofcom Code states: “News, in whatever...