"Cracking the Spine of Libel" - Olivia Judson Blog - NYTimes.com

As a media lawyer by profession and background, I have not wanted to focus too much here on legal issues. Since Managing the Crisis will be in London, however, I think this is one of the exceptions to my rule. In an era when so much in the electronic media world is perceived to be free, and so many views are being expressed, it is easy to conclude that laws restricting what can be said, or, most often, punishing what was said, are not relevant. This is a good discussion of why that is not the case. Any good newspaper manager has to remember that the newspaper usually bears utlimate responsibility for what it publishes in any medium, and the higher the profile of the newspaper, and the more determined the complainers, the more likely it is that litigation will happen. It may not be a crisis, but that's only because there have been enough people opposing the worst of it to keep it under control. If there are fewer media enterprises able to object, for various reasons, mostly economic, that may not continue to be the case.