Churnalism
22 February 2008
The concept of “churnalism” will be familiar to readers of Nick Davies’ book Flat Earth News. It describes journalism fed by partisan press releases and Wikipedia, and driven by the need to be first to press regardless of accuracy. If there is an increasing culture of churnalism, then all publishers face a legal double whammy: there is firstly a risk that they will publish more defamatory allegations – simply because they will slip through the net. Secondly, that in acting without proper checks they will have deprived themselves of the one legal defence that they might otherwise have had: the defence of “responsible journalism” or Reynolds Privilege.
Reynolds Privilege comes from a case involving the former Irish PM, Albert Reynolds. The Sunday Times wrote a story about him which he considered to be defamatory and he sued. The Sunday Times came up with a novel defence: that Reynolds shouldn’t succeed because, even if the allegations were untrue, the article was the fruit of “responsible journalism”. The House of Lords accepted the principle for all publishers, which include blogs and broadsheets alike - although they threw the Sunday Times out on the facts of the case. And so the concept of responsible journalism or Reynolds Privilege as a defence to defamation was born. There are ten points on the Reynolds checklist, and their relative importance waxes and wanes with different Court decisions. However the general principle remains the same: firstly, that the story has to be in the public interest (so no unwarranted invasions of an individual’s privacy for example). Secondly, the story should be carefully researched and balanced: the journalist should personally believe the story to be true and it should be reliably sourced. Thirdly - and most importantly from a practical point of view - the journalist should summarise the potentially contentious points of the article for the target and give the target a reasonable time to respond. Therefore next time a journalist calls up at 4pm demanding an immediate comment on unspecified and vague allegations lifted from a Google news alert, you can remind them what a responsible journalist, rather than a churnalist, would be doing.
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First published on Gorkana as part of Schillings' regular contribution to their site.
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