91Èȱ¬ moderation, the Law and "censorship" part 3: Reporting Restrictions
| 17:12 UK time, Thursday, 19 March 2009
This is the third and final post in a series. (Part 1, Part 2)
I'm the producer of the 91Èȱ¬ Central Communities Team, which means I work across most 91Èȱ¬ services dealing with moderation issues. This is the last post in a series of three about some of the legal issues that we face when moderating the 91Èȱ¬'s blogs, message boards and communities. I've written about defamation and contempt of court, but probably the trickiest for us to deal with are specific reporting restrictions.
Reporting restrictions are court orders that prohibit the release of specific information such as the names and addresses of witnesses, defendants, or young people involved in court cases. They can be imposed for a variety of reasons, such as to protect young or vulnerable witnesses or defendants, or because other trials are pending and release of the information could prevent a fair trial.
There are two things that make reporting restrictions so difficult to moderate. The first problem is that in many cases I couldn't even tell you what these restrictions are without risking prosecution, but as an example they currently include a bar on any new information being reported on . Sometimes communicating this to our users without giving away the information is hard - simply saying 'We removed your post but can't tell you why for legal reasons' is bound to frustrate users. It's also one of those areas that seems to fire up conspiracy theorists: 'if the 91Èȱ¬ are suppressing the truth on this, then they're definitely hiding something on the moon landings/JFK etc'
But the real challenge is the media that we work in. In print, television or radio complying with these restrictions is easy, but when anyone with access to the internet can publish content, once that information is available somewhere, distribution becomes easy and instantaneous. Many of our services are post or reactively moderated so comments appear straight away. And it's not just our services we have to watch for - we also have to decide whether to remove links to other sources of the information such as social networking sites or archived news stories.
The most famous recent example was the 'Baby P' case, where members of the public - or - attempted to use social media sites including 91Èȱ¬ message boards, to breach the court order forbidding the publishing of his killers' identities. Our moderation teams removed these posts as did those of , , and others, but the information was still widely distributed across the web. While blogs and comments inciting violence against the people convicted would not be acceptable under any rules, the public's desire to distribute this information is perhaps understandable with an emotive issue such as this. And to them our actions probably appear as callous censorship, but publication in breach of any court imposed restriction could seriously interfere with the course of justice or destroy someone's life or liberty as well as bringing the risk of prosecution.
When his post attracted some commenters who thought that discussion of publishers' legal responsibilities implied support for the actions of those protected by the order.
This is of course not the case. A publisher has no alternative but to comply with the restriction, although the 91Èȱ¬ and the other media organisations will challenge orders they consider to be legally unjustified and an unneccessary incursion into free speech.
Most restrictions are made for valid reasons - . Clearly, the 91Èȱ¬ has to comply with a restriction or it could face contempt proceedings, cause the collapse of a trial or damage someone's life.
But with the spread of access to internet publishing some people argue that it may prove pointless in the future to try to enforce some of these rulings. In the meantime we have no alternative but to remain mindful of and comply with our legal obligations.
The difficulty of moderating 91Èȱ¬ services within the law increases. And the cries of 'censorship' faced by major news organisations are only going to get louder.
Paul Wakely is Content Producer, Future Media & Technology.
Comment number 1.
At 19th Mar 2009, dennisjunior1 wrote:Paul:
I have been the 91Èȱ¬ Moderation series of "restrictions in the media"...I have a question...
Regarding the rule of removal sensitive information from a 91Èȱ¬ Information blog, message board etc....Is it a moderator or a member in the higher management..
I am not trying to be mean to a moderator, who has some experience in the field?
Also, Does Central Communities has legal advice in the Department incase of some comments are breaking a U.K. Law?
Thanks, Paul...for mentioning me in the previous note!
~Dennis Junior~
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Comment number 2.
At 20th Mar 2009, U13879755 wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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Comment number 3.
At 23rd Mar 2009, Central Communities Team wrote:Hi Dennis
Where a post or comment needs to be removed, this will usually be done by the moderator themselves. However we have a referral system which allows moderators to escalate posts or complaints to their supervisors, to the Central Communities Team or to the blog/board owner, who then in turn might refer to higher management, the Editorial Policy advisors, or consult a lawyer.
We call on the services of the 91Èȱ¬ lawyers for advice on comments where necessary, though obviously we implement the general guidelines in most cases. It's only the trickiest of comments that would get referred - something can only be ruled as defamatory in a court of law, so our job is about minimising the risks when handling large amounts of material.
Ensuring they have a good working knowledge of these legal issues is a large part of the moderator's training.
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Comment number 4.
At 23rd Mar 2009, JamesStGeorge wrote:*** 'We removed your post but can't tell you why for legal reasons' is bound to frustrate users. ***
Yes but surely you could say a bit more like 'court imposed reporting restriction on this subject'.
*** But with the spread of access to internet publishing some people argue that it may prove pointless in the future to try to enforce some of these rulings. In the meantime we have no alternative but to remain mindful of and comply with our legal obligations. ***
This is the heart of the matter. The current and future. The laws the 91Èȱ¬ understandably has to abide by, are simply out of date and reality. Further they plain can not work now. Any individual who happens to know some information subject to these old fashioned orders may have no idea the orders exist! Passing such information on in any internet or pub forum. Gone are the days when only a few professional media organisations could put information out to the world, that these old fashioned orders were made for. Unless the 'orders' are public notices highly publicised they are pointless and useless in this internet age.
May I suggest your illuminating blog posts in this series are made available by links from the house 'rules' type pages. Otherwise precious few will have seen them!
Oh thank you for providing a preview function! Much appreciated.
Now we wait on the other moderation/censorship rules to be covered :)
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Comment number 5.
At 23rd Mar 2009, Barbazenzero wrote:After 10pm GMT and the moderation queue on the political threads already approaching 5 hours again, removing all possibility of spontaneity or meaningful debate.
Why not try "post-moderation" for a day on, say, the Nick Robinson threads, if only to provide you with the ammunition to prove that you're right to treat us as you do children?
Post or reactive moderation for all except CBeebies, please!
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Comment number 6.
At 24th Mar 2009, Nick Reynolds wrote:Brownedov - you're off topic again. This post is about moderation and the law.
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Comment number 7.
At 24th Mar 2009, Barbazenzero wrote:#6 NickReynolds
OK, it's a fair cop, if you'll follow up on your #14 on the part 2 thread promising to "try and get a blog post about the subject".
I certainly do not envy the moderators their lot and recognise it's a fine line to tread for the reasons stated on these three threads.
Post or reactive moderation for all except CBeebies, please!
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Comment number 8.
At 31st Mar 2009, malcolmcoles wrote:If you think the 91Èȱ¬ has problems, what about ordinary bloggers.
I've just written a post pointing out that either bloggers aren't covered by reporting restrictions (because they don't know they exist) or are covered but have now way to find out what they are (and are not) permitted to say, in an absurd legal catch 22.
Either way, reporting restrictions haven't really caught up with the problems caused by the internet. And no one seems to tell Google News about reporting restrictions, so it merrily provides lists of non-UK headlines which would breach the reporting restrictions if published here.
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Comment number 9.
At 31st Mar 2009, malcolmcoles wrote:That link should be
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Comment number 10.
At 16th Apr 2009, mike kemble wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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Comment number 11.
At 3rd Jun 2009, dontaliban wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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