Whoops! - Fox News breaches Royal Injunction

That's a good point. Time to get out my law textbooks and see, ratehr than spout stuff off the top of my head I think...

Your first examples sound like defamation cases, not contempt of court. Fox couldn't be sued since contempt of court is common law, not civil law, and therefore punishable by a fine or prison, not a payment of compensation.

Fox will more than likely get away with it anyway if they've made it clear that these are allegations, rather than give the impression that what supposedly happened actually did (which would be slander, tried under civil law therefore they could be sued, and I don't think any broadcaster would be silly enough to do that).

I think I'm right anyway. Can't find anything in McNae's about foreign broadcasters. Defamation cases can be fought across borders, under the laws of the country in which the statements were published/broadcast and under UK law, something can be taken to court as a defamation case if it's read here, no matter where in the world it was published.

However, this is not defamation law we are dealing with, it's contempt of court law, which I think can only be enforces of publications and broadcasts within the UK (though I could well be proved wrong).

Isn't Fox News deemed to broadcast from the UK, since they uplink to the Astra satellite from here, and have to hold a licence with the ITC?

(which explains why they can get rapped on the knuckles for things like undue prominence)

I think the best thing for me to do would be to ask my law lecturer! Whizzed off an email...

Yet again I ask why we continue to have a royal family - in this case they are quite clearly operating above the law. I hope these allegations are eventually on the front page of every newspaper, are proved to be true, and destroy them as a result of it. This archaic practice really had to end some time, it might as well be now.

And what do they hope to achieve by gagging the British media? You can get everything off the internet anyway.

Although I don't know the story yet, I have a pretty good idea what's happened from various accounts. And if this servant really did see mechanical parts coming out of Prince Charles, I don't see why it should be hidden. It's about time the whole Royal Family revealed their cybernektic origins. And that's all I'm saying for now, to avoid a lawsuit.
Thank you.

I'm not entirely sure of how this has been handled on TV, but I remember a similar story with John Leslie where the BBC were not allowed to name him and yet other channels did openly... an earlier post here mentioned that again, the BBC was withholding information - why is this the case? Afterall, you can't have a news service that says "well... there's some news, but I'm not telling it you" which seems to be what they are doing in some cases?

All the BBC was doing was obeying the law - IIRC there *was* an injunction regarding Leslie, it was just flouted (the clues that were allowed out made it obvious, so it wasn't exactly secret anyway).

I don't think it's a case of "why did the BBC obey the injunction" ; rather "why did everyone else flout it"?

Of course, if my recallection about there being an injunction is wrong, you can disregard all that

Did anyone see the start of tonight's Graham Norton... Very funny, but shocked 'did he just say that' too?

Do we want a gay King?