Word: press
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Human rights court rebukes England for gagging the press...
...Holocaust to prevent the rise of another Nazi Germany, solemnly declared last week that Great Britain had failed a basic test of human rights. Free expression, ruled the 20-judge European Court of Human Rights, had been denied by a longstanding English law that stifled the press and allowed a national scandal to go virtually unreported for a decade...
...were provided with lawyers who, in many cases, knew next to nothing about personal injury cases. Because of the law's delay and Distillers' refusal to offer more than niggardly settlements to the victims, the case dragged on into the '70s. All the while, the British press was banned from saying anything about it. The reason: under British "contempt of court" law, judges quickly impose fines and jail terms on editors and reporters who comment on any case under court review. The purpose of the law is to prevent "trial by newspaper," but no attempt is made...
...British press has a tradition of quietly putting up with this and other restrictions on its freedom. But in 1972, the London Sunday Times ran out of patience. In a series of articles entitled "Our Thalidomide Children: A Cause for National Shame," the Sunday Times made it clear that Distillers had been miserly with the Thalidomide victims. The stories provoked public outrage and pressured Distillers to raise its original settlement offer sevenfold, from an average of about $25,000 per child to $175,000. The articles were clearly in contempt of court. But the Sunday Times managed to avoid fines...
...Rights in Strasbourg. When the commission decided the Sunday Times case was worth hearing a year later, the English government and the courts began backing down. By then, it would have been absurd not to. Almost all the Thalidomide litigation was settled, leaving little to be prejudiced by the press. The dam finally broke: in 1976, the Sunday Times was allowed to print for the first time a story that explicitly discussed Distillers' negligence. And in 1977, the commission decided that England had violated the "free expression" guarantee of a human rights convention adopted by Britain and 17 other...