LWS011 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Defamation Act
LWS011 Journalism Law- Week 3 Lecture: Defamation
-Defamation poses an inherent difficulty in reporting and journalism.
Journalists are in the business of publishing controversial news stories about people and their
activities
-The law of defamation aims to protect, as always, the balance between the right of the public to
know, and the personal right of the individual to their reputation.
-Defamation is almost a daily occurrence in our lives
The concept of reputation is essential to defamation.
-Reputation is defined in the Cambridge dictionary as "the opinion that people in general have
about someone or something, or how much respect or admiration or something received, based on
past behaviour or character".
Reputation is about the extent to which public perceptions of individuals are supported by a
person's character.
-There are intersections between defamation law and privacy protection, as you will learn later in
the semester.
-Privacy aims to protect the individual in their self-concept through the control of their personal
information.
-Defamation protects also a range of interests, which includes the property value of a person's
reputation, and protecting the individual's right to be himself or herself and to reach self-realisation
within society.
(or privacy laws protect how a person feels about themselves in relation to themselves only: and
defamation law is concerned about how individuals feel about themselves with respect to society
and how society as a whole perceives that individual).
-Defamation is a "tort"- ie. A civil wrong (an as such is distinct from criminal law).
-Historically, people's reputations were seen as part of their spiritual beings; as such defamation,
proceedings were often brought in the ecclesiastical courts of the Church of England.
From the 16th century, defamation actions were increasingly brought in the common law courts.
-In Australia, defamation was put in legislative form in the Defamation Act 1847 (NSW). After the
separation of the colonies/states, some chose to repeat; the Act and revert to the common law,
some adopted it, and others enacted their own legislation.
596.42
301.51
-At federation, the Commonwealth was not granted the power to deal with matters of defamation
law, so it was left to the stated .
Up until 2006, Australia therefore had eight different defamation laws, in a strange combination of
legislation of case law.
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