INTRODUCTION OF LEGAL GUIDE FOR MEDIA PRACTITIONERS
A LEGAL GUIDE FOR MEDIA PRACTITIONERS –
INTRODUCTION
26/10/2016
Dave Asei
The Practice of Social Media and Journalism is becoming more complex by
the day and as such need some form of guide in the legal aspect so that
practitioners will not fall prey to some pitfalls that might lead to
litigation.
Consequently, I shall present to the readers in series guide to Media
laws beginning with this introduction.
Media
law is one of the most complex and fastest growing areas of the law. Until
fairly recently, it was not universally considered a discrete subject of study,
and it was certainly not included in the syllabi of journalism or other media-related courses. The reason for this neglect was
largely attitudinal: any legal problem which presented itself to a working
journalist was seen as falling with the province of the professional lawyer.
The bigger media outfits have always had an in-house legal adviser, and the
smaller ones usually referred cases to an outside lawyer. But a combination of
factors made that arrangement less than satisfactory over the years. These
included: rising litigiousness in society; runaway growth in statutory and
other regulatory activity; increasing complexity of the law; and an
intensification of competitive pressures within the media which has led to, and
in many cases actively encouraged, journalistic risk-taking on a much wider
scale than had been seen in the past.
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