Seenquestion medialaw20121

provoke violence.Freedom of expression is the lifeblood of democaracy without which an effective rule of law is impossible.

Any curtailment of article 10 ECHR must be proportionate to the end sought to be achieved.Freedom of expression is the rule and the regulation of speech is the exception requiring justification.

The offence of religious hatred is however subject to a wider freedom of expression defence s.29J RHA 2006 seeks to balance the right to free expression with the need to prevent crime and disorder in a democratic society.

Some have argued that concepts such as “abusive” and “insulting” are subjective and have been broadly interpreted by the courts.The Liberty,Justice and Joint committee on human rights have called for a comprehensive review of the law in this area.

In general protected expression may include personal insults,together with views,ideas or information that offends ,shocks or disturbs the state or any section of the community.

Journalistic freedom also covers possible recourse to a degree of exaggeration or even provocation.

One criticism of the way the law deals with media offences is that determining what motivates a person to commit a crime is difficult.An offender may commit a crime against another based on a number of possible prejudices such as envy and jealousy.This may translate into language that might be used as evidence that the offender is racially motivated when the opposite is true.

Another criticism of racially and religious motivated crime based on hostility to members of a group is that the terms do not reflect the reality of how racist and religious behaviour affects members of ethnic communities.Some moslems argue that Jews and Rastafarians enjoy legal protection in the criminal law because they are deemed to satisfy the criteria of what is an ethnic group.Moslems in contrast are excluded from the definition because of the way the House of Lords defined the term in Mandla.

Meanwhile,there is a need for increased self-regulation by the media as a means of complementing the criminal law in this area.By virtue of s 19 POA 1986 and s 22 POA 1986 those in the publishing and broadcast media commit the offence of inciting racial hatred if they publish or broadcast material that is likely to stir up racial hatred.s 4 of the Offcom code states that broadcasters must exercise responsibility with respect to the content of religious programmes and that no religion must be subject to abusive treatment. In addition,the code of practice of the Press Complaints Commission states that there is a public interest in freedom of expression itself and that whenever the public interest is invoked by the press,the PCC will require editors to demonstrate that they reasonable believed the publication was indeed in thepublic interest.

In conclusion,I am strongly support the view that there is a justification for using the criminal law to punish incitement racial and religious hatred.However,this must be complemented by greater self-regulation by the press.

Religious animosity between Celtic and Rangers as well as anti-Semitic remarks would be discussed in the context of the Religious hatred Act 2006.

Discussion of broadcast material.Broadcasters can be liable( s22 POA 1986) Cases Mandla v Dovell.

Rv Relf(1979) R v Edwards(1983) Defences