Thursday 13 May 2010

Hackney PR disaster

One of the less terrifying entries on this spiky conversation about law on Stokey Talk provided a link to Private Eye's defence of the Hackney Citizen.

If you have a look you'll notice that Private Eye has published the conversations that Hackney Council is trying to censor - an issue which is discussed in Journalism.co.uk.

What is Private Eye's circulation? About 250,000? Is this what Hackney Council might call a PR disaster?

4 comments:

  1. What makes me laugh is even Hackney didn't suggest what Boff did was a violation of RIPA. All Hackney alluded to was a breach of privacy.

    Look, I understand journalists wanting to make a name for themselves and generate a buzz - but wild speculation about the law reminds me of a kid running with scissors.

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  2. This legal stuff is addictive reading but in a horror movie 'I hope it doesn't happen to me' way. Did you see the Dave Osler story? I hope homes and things are not at risk for the citizen crew. I'm also hoping that the involvement of Private Eye will put Hackney off taking this any further. If not then I aim to hand over a pitiful amount of cash to the citizen's fighting fund.

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  3. On the kids with scissors front you're probably right but from the point of view of someone who doesn't know any better, I thought you both sounded quite convincing.

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  4. I have been following Dave and Jack. I admire Jack, because he busts bullshit for free. The point of the case against Dave is that it never had any merit in law. So "sounding convincing" isn't good enough.

    As Louise once said (or was it Thelma?)

    "Man, that law's some tricky shit".

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