ABSTRACT

This chapter provides a reminder that there is one area where newspapers are not so critical of the European Convention on Human Rights and seem to favour judicial protection – the field of media freedom. Many of the usual complaints about the protection of fundamental rights tend to be put to one side when media freedom is at stake. Through examining some of the key case law of domestic courts and the European Court of Human Rights the chapter critiques two of the key criticisms often levelled at the judicial protection of human rights, namely that it paves the way for overly activist judges and allows the imposition of the views of ‘foreign’ judges. The double standards become evident on examination of the extent to which newspapers have in fact been willing to rely on the legal protection of press freedom.