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Interview: Romana
Canneti, media lawyer

Stempra newsletter

INTERVIEW: Romana Canneti, media lawyer

Romana Canneti is an experienced media lawyer, advising various outlets on pre-publication advice, handling of legal and issues arising post publication. After she spoke at a Stempra event in November, Ruth Francis quizzed her on her background, the Justice Secretary and the British Chiropractic Association.

Ruth Francis (RF) What got you into this career?

Romana Canneti (RC) I used to work in TV as a producer so had media background. When I became a barrister, I did my pupillage at one of the two big media focused chambers who specialise in libel work. Now I am no longer a fulltime barrister and work regularly as a freelancer for the Independent, Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, ITN Television News, News International and others.

RF One of the most interesting things about the job must be the diversity of material you have to work on. Is that challenging?

RC Every day is different because it’s dictated by the news agenda. You do get patterns and there are repetitions but you never have the same day at the office ever! The beauty of a large part of my job, legalling articles in advance, is that you don’t take your work home with you.

With certain stories you have to get your head around the issues before you can start to analyse the story legally. Often there’s very little time. Whereas there are specialist journalists, in say, science or finance, you don’t get specialist pre-publication lawyers. You sometimes have to become an expert in very arcane or complicated fields; if you don’t get it you can’t legal it properly.

RF Could you explain some of the key terms you discussed at the Stempra session? You talked us through contempt and libel and it would be useful to cover that information here.

RC Contempt: There are various forms in which you can be found in contempt of court; for example, jurors have been found in contempt for falling asleep or for communicating with people in the courtroom. News outlets can be in contempt too, most commonly in a criminal trial where they must avoid saying anything that may prejudice a jury; that can be from past criminal record to outside comment by witnesses.

Automatic reporting restrictions apply to any reports involving children, the victims of sexual offences or in other areas such as the recent court of protection test case whereby you are automatically banned from identifying parties and issues involved. In such cases the press has to make an application to attend private hearings and another application to report what they heard.

It’s a very large area of law and it’s a criminal offence to breach the rules so in theory the editor could end up in prison, or a huge fine could be imposed.

Libel: These laws are designed to protect claimant’s reputation, and they’re considered by many to be particularly draconian in this country. At the moment the Justice Secretary is reviewing the libel laws and a committee has been set up by the Dept of Culture, Media and Sport to investigate whether they work. There have been concerns that claimants abroad who don’t have a reputation to protect in the UK are coming here to bring libel actions they couldn’t in their own country.

For example, in America freedom of speech usually takes precedence over everything else so you’re more or less able to say whatever you want. The burden is on the claimant to prove that the alleged defamatory comments are false rather than for the news outlet to prove that what they’re saying is true which is the case in the UK.

RF You mentioned libel reform and this is something we’ve heard a lot about in the news recently. Could you explain what the Justice Secretary is looking into at the moment?

RC They are looking at various reforms from the scales of costs and damages to whether the burden of proof should be reversed. At the moment there’s a tension under the Human Rights Act, between article eight which protects right to privacy and article ten which provides for the right to free speech. The courts are wrestling with how to balance those two rights in a just way.

English judges seem to be coming down more in favour of a claimant’s reputation and some say free speech is suffering. This has huge implications for comment based science writing and how much it can be defended in English libel laws.

RF What are the main defences against libel?

RC The main catch-all defence available to the publisher of a defamatory statement is to prove that the statement complained of is true. That’s called justification, but it can be difficult as the publisher has not always been in a position to gather first hand evidence. That is the gold standard defence and if a paper is in a position to substantiate an allegation in an article, that’s extremely comforting to a pre-publication lawyer.

The other most common defences available to a publisher are qualified privilege and fair comment. Common law defence for qualified privilege was set out by Reynolds back in 2000 in the House of Lords. Link: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199899/ldjudgmt/jd991028/rey01.htm and/or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_v_Times_Newspapers_Ltd
These ten criteria have continued to be applied by the courts over the years. There have been complaints that we have no such thing as a public interest defence in this country, but we do have a version of it under the Reynolds defence.

Fair comment: If you have honestly expressed your view (no matter how negatively) you can often be protected but you have to be able to prove that underlying fact is true and provable. What you’ve published must be based on verifiable facts. The view must be one hat could be made by an honest person. However prejudiced you may be you can’t manufacture an angry and negative view of somebody. You can express an angry or negative view of somebody so long as you didn’t do it to create a stir or sell a paper.

RF And we’re probably familiar with the Simon Singh case. He’s appealing against the ruling in favour of the British Chiropractic Association. How does that work?

RC The case so far seems to hinge on whether Singh meant in his article that the BCA are happily promoting treatments in the knowledge that they’re bogus or as Singh argues they’re happy promoting the treatments but aren’t doing it in a dishonest way.

The initial ruling the court was asked to make was on whether fair comment would be a viable defence, and if so, which meaning should be attributed to Singh's words. And that would be based on whether his comment was clearly his opinion and a justifiable one. The court of appeal gave Singh permission to appeal the initial ruling that his words had meant that the BCA were knowingly promoting bogus treatments, which he’d initially been denied by Mr Justice Eady. I’m not an expert on the case but you can follow it on Jack of Kent’s website: http://jackofkent.blogspot.com

RF Finally, what is the role of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC)? Isn’t the media supposed to be self-regulating? How does that affect your job?

RC A news organisation has to handle complaints that are channelled by PCC. A lot of readers’ gripes are dealt with at that stage – and the paper or news organisation may print a correction or alter the website. Many complaints are settled in that way. It is embarrassing to have to publish a correction and in order to avoid this occurrence at prepublication a lawyer’s work involves checking that news items are not in breach of the PCC Code.