The Ohinemuri Gazette. WEDNESDAY, NOV. 23, 1910. LIBEL LAW.

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume XXI, Issue 2722, 23 November 1910, Page 2

The Ohinemuri Gazette. WEDNESDAY, NOV. 23, 1910. LIBEL LAW.

We are pleased to note that amongst the Bills which it is proposed by the Government to proceed with this session is included the Law of Libel Amendment Bill. If passed as printed, it will protect individuals and the press from prosecution for the publication of matter which it is to the benefit ot the public should be printed. As the law stands at present the publication of the proceedings at a meeting of a public body, it any member make a libellous statement, the newspaper which publishes that statement is liable to an action. Hither-

to, it has been possible for any unscrupulous person to construe anything written concerning him or his doings to be a libel, and commence an action in:the Supreme Court. Whether he gains the action or hot the newspaper is put ■to expense. This detect in the law will be remedied, it the Act passes, by clause 10, which reads as follows :-—" A magistrate upon the hearing of a charge of the publication of a defamatory libel may receive evidence as to the publication being for the public benefit, and as to the tiuth of the defamatory statement, and as •to any other matter which might be given in evidence by way of defence by the person charged on his trial- or indictment; and the magistrate, if he is of opinion, after hearing such evidence, that there is a strong or probable presumption that a jury on the tnal would acquit the person charged, may dismiss, the case." For many years the Press has appealed to Parliament to give them reasonable protection in the performance of their duties, but without avail. We congratulate the Prime Minister upon making an effort to relieve it from the injustice to which the Act, as it stands, subjects

it to, and as a consequence protects the doer of shady or criminal tricks from

exposure,