Journalists reporting from conflict zones are increasingly at risk of injury or death. Not only are they at risk of becoming a casualty in the crossfire, they are now often directly targeted and killed because of their profession. The legal framework protecting journalists in conflict zones consists predominantly of International Humanitarian Law, supplemented by International Human Rights Law and International Criminal Law. The main body of law providing protection to journalists consists of the Geneva Conventions and their additional Protocols, which are now several decades old. Since their drafting, there have been significant changes in the way we conduct wars, as well as in the way journalists operate and report from conflict zones. This raises the question whether this legal framework is still suitable for the protection of journalists in contemporary conflicts. This thesis confirms that the legal framework contains, at least in theory, a significant number of provisions that continue to provide protection for journalists in conflict zones. What is clear, however, is that there are significant differences in the protection awarded to journalists based on the type of journalist, for example whether they are embedded or function independently in conflict zones, the type of conflict they are covering and even their nationality. The result is a rather complicated legal framework that is not always easy to apply in practice. It has been argued by the International Committee of the Red Cross, a view also reflected in most of the academic literature, that the protection offered by the current legal framework is adequate, but that the enforcement of it is lacking. This is considered the predominant reason why journalists reporting on conflicts currently face such significant risks to their safety. While this is clearly part of the problem, this thesis challenges the notion that the legal framework provides all necessary protection and that only through stronger enforcement can protection be increased. In particular, it suggests that this ignores the effect that clarity and the comprehensiveness of the framework can have on enforcement. Having explored the gaps and limitations in the existing law, this thesis sets out the case for introducing a dedicated convention for the protection of journalists in conflict zones in order to clarify and streamline the current legal framework.

Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of Communication, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 69-77).

Internet intermediaries facilitate a wide range of conduct using services supplied over the layered architecture of modern communications networks. Members of this class include search engines, social networks, internet service providers, website operators, hosts, and payment gateways, which together exert a critical and growing influence upon national and global economies, governments and cultures. This research examines who should face legal responsibility when wrongdoers utilise these services tortiously to cause harm to others. It has three parts. Part 1 seeks to understand the nature of an intermediary and how its liability differs from the liability of primary defendants. It classifies intermediaries according to a new layered, functional taxonomy and argues that many instances of secondary liability in English private law reflect shared features and underlying policies, including optimal loss-avoidance and derivative liability premised on an assumption of responsibility. Part 2 analyses intermediaries’ monetary liability for secondary wrongdoing in two areas of English law: defamation and copyright. It traces the historical evolution of these doctrines at successive junctures in communications technology, before identifying and defending limits on that liability which derive from three main sources: (i) in-built limits contained in definitions of secondary wrongdoing; (ii) European safe harbours and general limits on remedies; and (iii) statutory defences and exceptions. Part 3 examines intermediaries’ non-monetary liability, in particular their obligations to disclose information about alleged primary wrongdoers and to cease facilitating wrongdoing where it is necessary and proportionate to do so. It proposes a new suite of non-facilitation remedies designed to restrict access to tortious internet materials, remove such materials from search engines, and reduce the profitability of wrongdoing. It concludes with several recommendations to improve the effectiveness and proportionality of remedies by reference to considerations of architecture, anonymity, efficient procedures, and fundamental rights.

This thesis investigates whether institutional journalism should receive special treatment at the hands of the law. Special treatment encompasses the affording of benefits to and the imposition of liabilities on journalistic institutions and the individuals who work for them. The arguments against special treatment are pragmatic and theoretical: pragmatic arguments emphasise, inter alia, the difficulty of providing a definition of journalism, and theoretical arguments emphasise the difficulty in explaining why special treatment can be coherent. The former can be addressed by describing how special treatment is already afforded to institutional journalism, both liabilities and benefits, to individuals and institutions, and showing that some of the problems foreseen by the pragmatic arguments have not proved as difficult as they appear. The arguments that special treatment is incoherent can be addressed by arguing that the credibility and assessability of institutional journalism still provide a prima facie rationale for special treatment irrespective of the rise of public speech on the Internet, when combined with the integral nature of journalism to democracy. Two basic arguments are advanced why this is so. The first, the free speech values argument, is a consequentialist account that holds that special treatment is appropriate when (or because) institutional journalism contributes to free speech values. It is attractive, but presents difficulties, both when considered in the abstract and when applied to the free speech value of democracy. The second, a rights-based argument, based on the notion that freedoms of speech and of the Press are distinguishable, can be based on either on Dworkin’s theory of rights as trumps or Raz’s theory of rights as interests. Raz’s account is preferable, as it complements the free speech values thesis in explaining the coherence of special treatment.