When one of its articles has been criticised in the land of the free for failing to live up to the standards of robust journalism, what should a newspaper do? Well, the first thing obviously is to send the lawyers in.
The Sunday Times has demanded that journalist Glenn Greenwald remove an image of its front page from a highly critical blog on The Intercept. Not because it was libellous or indeed wrong, but because it infringes copyright. As Greenwald’s blog article alleged that the paper lied – it subsequently removed an erroneous reference to his partner David Miranda meeting Edward Snowden in Moscow – and showed the worst kind of behaviour in British journalism, it seemed a weak sort of response.
In contrast, Greenwald’s response was not only to refuse but to link to the letter from News UK’s general counsel.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 15, 2015No, @TheSundayTimes, we are not going to remove the image of your humiliating headline from our story about it https://t.co/55sCL5irnT
I asked News UK why they had sent the letter amid growing criticism of the article – which alleged that Russia and China had access to files leaked by Snowden. A spokesperson for News UK said: “We are happy for our editorial content to be subject to robust and healthy political debate. However, as a matter of general principle, we need to protect our intellectual property and make no apologies for expecting others to pay for the professional journalism we invest in.”
Now, while it is the case that showing the whole of a front page could be said to constitute substantial use and therefore to contravene copyright (which is why newspapers show so many ragouts of pages) it is at the most generous a technical argument.
Even non-lawyers would recognise that showing the front page of a newspaper when writing about one of its stories would surely constitute “fair use and fair dealing”.
But then I suppose nobody said that all’s fair in love and leaking.