“The rule of law can be wiped out in one misguided, however well-intentioned, generation.”
William T Gossett
After spending much of last week reading law blogs for the UK Blawg Review I am writing (Sorry it is late – but I have been rather ill of late) I was fascinated by the extraordinary “NightJack” outing in the Times dissected with precision by lawyer, blogger and journalist David Allen Green – a remarkable piece of writing.
David Allen Green’s blog analysis deserves a post of its own:
The Times and NightJack: an anatomy of a failure
The story of how, in a string of managerial and legal lapses, the Times hacked NightJack and effectively misled the High Court.
David Allen Green begins his analysis – which I urge you to read thus:
The award-winning “NightJack” blogger was outed in 2009 by the Times of London. At the time the newspaper maintained that its controversial publication of a blogger’s real identity was based on brilliant detective work by a young staff journalist. However, it is now clear that the blogger’s identity was established by unethical and seemingly unlawful hacking of the blogger’s private email account.
If the hack was not bad enough, the Leveson Inquiry has also heard how the newspaper in effect misled the High Court about it when the blogger sought an urgent injunction against his forced identification. The blogger lost that critical privacy case and it is possible that the case could have been decided differently if the Times had disclosed the hack to the court.
The following is a narrative of what happened. It reveals a depressing sequence of failures at the “newspaper of record”. Most of the sources for this post are set out on the resource page at my Jack of Kent……..
Dear Charon,
sorry to hear about health problems – get well soon, and keep the flag flying – your posts are sorely missed.
Odondon
Fascinating. Today, when one follows the link to Patrick Foster’s website (http://www.patrickfoster.co.uk/) from one of his Guardian stories published after he left “The Times” and went freelance one finds it consists of one work; “error”. Res ipse loquitor.
Thank you for this Mike – a great honour to have a post about my NightJack work.
John – fascinating. Foster should not be scapegoat. The editor of the Times is the most culpable in all this.
Yes, I should very much like to add my thoughts here.
David Allen Green is an exceptionally gifted blogger, with a writing style which makes contemporary law interesting, informative, and relevant to many people.
I’m very happy that there’s a post here on NightJack, which is a superb piece of journalism.
Best wishes.
[…] to say about his fellow UK lawyer, blogger and journalist, David Allen Green, in a post entitled: Law review: A study in good legal blog writing: NightJack by David Allen Green. Perhaps someday Green will unblock me on Twitter so I can write a nice post about his Jack of Kent […]
[…] Ah… indeed… such stuff as dreams are made on! Solicitor and New Statesman columnist David Allen Green on his Jack of Kent blog has a most interesting, albeit brief, analysis of the ‘Matter of Jeremy Hunt MP’ (my highlighting): Hunt is almost over. If you didn’t see David Allen Green’s excellent analysis of the now infamous NightJack outing – I drew attention to it here with all links. […]
This is certainly a very interesting case. There has been much coverage of these types of practices being carried out by newspapers of late and so certainly needs more attention.