NY Times Story Exclusion Raises Concerns

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

Despite the fact that the New York Times felt they not only had valid, but legal reasons to exclude a story from British online readers, legal and media experts are concerned there are new questions being raised by this action. While the Times blocked the story from their site, British newspapers the Times and the Daily Mail published details in print from the Times article.

Media lawyer Mark Stephens of Finer, Stephens, Innocent said he could not see anything wrong with the blocked New York Times article and the decision by British papers to print similar details showed the contempt of court law may be the problem.

“It’s probably unhelpful to have an area of law which is so uncertain where one set of lawyers is saying censor everything while another says there’s nothing wrong with it,” he said. Source: Yahoo! News

We Say: There’s another comment in the story which indicates that blocking the story may actually heighten interest in it … and I agree. It’s not like someone who tried hard enough couldn’t find details from the Times story online somewhere else.