Features

What is a media monopoly in this country and how did Rupert Murdoch get permission to buy the rest of BSkyB? Matthew Cook examines competition law in respect of media ownership

Amid the present controversy over hacking at the News of the World, concerns have once again come to the fore about the size and role of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire and the power that this gives him over British politicians and the British public.  The position is very different from a few months ago when it looked likely that News International would be given permission to extend its media empire in the United Kingdom still further by acquiring the rest of BSkyB (in which it presently has a 39.1% minority interest), subject only to a condition that it should dispose of Sky News. 

Job title
Silk, One Essex Court

One Essex Court specialises in all forms of commercial litigation. Its work embraces all aspects of domestic and international trade, commerce and finance. Its members provide specialist advice and advocacy services worldwide, which include all areas of dispute resolution, litigation and arbitration. Members of Chambers also regularly accept nominations as arbitrators, mediators and experts

Christopher Stephens, the new Chairman  of the Judical Appointments Commission, talks to Counsel’s David Wurzel about the Commission’s aims and his role.  

“I arrived knowing very little in February”, Christopher Stephens, the new Chairman of the Judicial Appointments Commission (the “JAC”) confessed when I met him in September. Since then, he says, “I have learned my way through your profession”. He did however have a head start in respect of recommending people for appointments:  before becoming a Civil Service Commissioner and a member of the Senior Salaries Review Board he spent 30 years in Human Resources. 

James Woolf explains the role of the Bar Council’s Ethical Enquiries Service . 

“I’m pretty sure that I know the answer to this, but I’d just like to run it by you.” With this line or something similar begin many of the calls handled by the Bar Council’s Ethical Enquiries Line. Perhaps this should not be surprising, as part of the purpose of the service is to provide a safety net for the profession, a sounding board if you like for barristers who find themselves in those knotty situations which clearly engage the Code of Conduct.  

A sortie into the outside world leads to questions about how to adapt to modern times 

September 10, 2011:  “Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get”
- George Bernard Shaw.

The life of a barrister can be self-absorbing. From the Temple we venture out to all points of the compass, meeting people from walks of life we would rarely, if ever, encounter in real life.

Law and Peace
by Tim Kevan
Bloomsbury, May 2011
£11.99 pp320

In the 1920’s, the Law Journal published a series of character-sketches of lawyers under the pseudonym “O”. These vignettes were eventually published as Forensic Fables and the author unveiled as Theo Mathew, son of Lord Justice Mathew and himself a Bencher of Lincoln’s Inn. The enduring popularity of Forensic Fables came from its recognisable and often affectionate caricatures. It is in this tradition that Tim Kevan gives us Law and Peace, the latest instalment in his BabyBarista series. 

I’m ready for my close-up: Toby Craig and Charles Hale mull over cameras in courts

The debate over cameras in courts has been rumbling on for about as long as that on goal-line technology in football. It has often seemed that the more we talk about it, the further we are from any resolution. In fact, historically, the only thing we could be sure of was that we would keep arguing about it. In a modern world of 24-hour news, smart-phone cameras and the prevalence of social media, opening up the justice system for all to see might seem a no-brainer - in New Zealand for instance, you can now stream live trials via the internet to help the winter evenings fly by - but is it? It is all too easy to paint this as a dispute between anachronistic fuddy-duddies and forward-thinking modernisers (which a Sky News led campaign has sought to do), but in reality, the issue is far more delicately balanced, even if the technology is now all available. 

Job title
Barrister, 11KBW

11KBW advises on all areas of civil practice with particular depth of experience in public law having acted, inter alia, in the leading case on the right to free elections. Along with its reputation in education law, chambers brings its expertise to bear in EU Competition and regularly advises central government, local authorities and individuals.

A media storm followed the conviction of Levi Bellfield for the murder of Milly Dowler. Ali Naseem Bajwa QC examines the fallout from the case

The medieval practice of determining guilt or innocence by subjecting the accused to trial by ordeal has happily long since passed. However, following the conviction of Levi Bellfield for the murder of Milly Dowler, the victim’s family described their experience of the trial as an ordeal and said that they had paid “too high a price” for the conviction. In the ensuing media and, inevitable, political storm the Criminal Justice System came in for intense criticism, much of it centred on a claim that the trial process is balanced unfairly in favour of the rights of the accused over the rights of victims of crime and witnesses. 

Recent events surrounding News International and the phone hacking  scandal raise questions about the future of the Press Complaints Commission. Desmond Browne QC investigates

Never can the press have shown so much interest in its own affairs as when examining where responsibility lies for the phone-hacking which took place at the now-defunct News of the World. Not only has this inevitably raised questions about corporate governance at News International, it has also led to the reading of the obsequies over the Press Complaints Commission (“PCC”). Typical was the contribution from the former Lord Chancellor, Jack Straw MP, in his Gareth Williams Memorial Lecture in July: “The PCC’s failure, not least in the face of the hacking scandal, has been abject. Its obituaries have now been pronounced, from across the political spectrum. All we await is the last rites”.