Category: Public Relations

What Factors Determine Whether a Web Publisher Is Entitled to Protections in California?

by

Larry Drexel

California, as well as most other states, has rules in place providing special protections for journalists. Limiting the risk of personal liability for journalists from the potentially injurious consequences of defamation lawsuits is essential to protecting true freedom of the press, explains an attorney. However, questions have arisen regarding whether such professional protections should extend to all publishers of web content, including bloggers.

Liability for Defamation

In California, as well as in other states, the law recognizes the importance and value of a person’s good name. As such, defamation is a tort claim that provides a plaintiff with a legal remedy for damage to his or her reputation. Defamation can take the form of slander, which is an untrue and damaging claim made via spoken word, sounds, sign language or gestures. It can also take the form of libel, which is based on published statements.

In order for a claim of defamation to be made, the claim or damaging statement giving rise to the lawsuit must be false, and it must be made as though it were true. The claim must also have been made to people other than the person or entity being defamed. In most cases, actual damages must be proven, although there are certain statements considered defamatory per se, which means that damages are assumed.

Although defamation claims can be difficult to prove in many cases due to the difficulty of proving or quantifying damages, defamation lawsuits have, at times, put major newspapers at risk. As such, courts and legislatures have imposed certain limitations on defamation lawsuits. In a case called New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, for example, the court established a more stringent standard for public figures to claim defamation, requiring actual malice on the part of the defendant. Actual malice is a standard stipulating that the defendant must have made the harmful statements knowing they were false or with reckless disregard as to their truth.

Many states also have “retraction laws” that protect a newspaper or journalist from liability for defamation unless an opportunity has first been provided to retract the false statements. For instance, under California’s retraction statute (Cal. Civ. Code section 48a), a plaintiff has a period of 20 days to make a request for retraction after discovering an allegedly defamatory statement.

All requests for retraction are required to be in writing and specify which statements the plaintiff is claiming are defamatory. The request must also include a demand that a retraction be made. Upon receipt of a retraction request, a newspaper must publish a retraction within three weeks and must publish it in a manner that is “substantially as conspicuous” as the original claims. For instance, if the story was on the front page, the retraction must also be on the front page.

When a defendant makes a retraction as required under the retraction laws, a plaintiff’s damages for defamation are limited to actual economic losses and do not include either punitive damages or general damages for loss of reputation.

Finally, in addiction to retraction laws and tougher standards for defamation in most cases, journalists are also protected from being held in contempt of court for failure to reveal a confidential source. These protections come in the form of state laws called “shield laws.”

Since the advent of the Internet, news content has increasingly been distributed online. Established news agencies, however, are not the only purveyors of information anymore: people have more access to content and greater capability to create and disseminate it, as evidenced by the proliferation of blogs.

In recent years, as bloggers have been targeted with defamation lawsuits, the question has arisen as to whether they are personally entitled to the same protections from the potentially injurious consequences of such legal actions as journalists, explains an attorney. Rulings made in California courts have tended to focus more on the content and its purpose than on the author and his or her affiliations to established news organizations. The 2002 case of Condit v. National Enquirer Inc set the precedent that the state’s retraction laws protect publishers engaged in the ‘immediate dissemination of news,’ while the court, in O’Grady v. Superior Court, found that those who collect news to convey to the public are considered to be reporters and thus protected under the state’s shield laws.

Given these rulings, whether or not web publishers are afforded protections under the law is dependant more on the content they disseminate to the public than their professional status.

Larry Drexel is a Public Relations manager. To obtain free, informative books or articles he suggests visiting

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.

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What Factors Determine Whether a Web Publisher Is Entitled to Protections in California?

Submitted by: Maric Vobler

When the offer made by the translator meets the work provider s needs and specifications, both can reach agreement on the nature and terms and conditions of the service to be provided. The transaction stems from the conjunction of a request for translation (made by the work provider via a call for tenders or other channels) and an offer of services by a translator, including a time schedule and an estimate. A compromise usually has to be reached between the translator s conditions of sale and his client s conditions of purchase.

Once agreement has been reached, some sort of contract is drawn up and signed. This generally includes a confidentiality agreement. The work provider sends the translator the material to be translated (which can be a text, a video for subtitling, a DVD for dubbing, documents, the contents of a Web site, code, messages, tapes, or any other kind of source material), together with a translation kit that includes anything that the translator might need.

Unless the material is certified 100% reliable, any source document, whether it be text, code, digital recordings or any other type of material, needs first of all to be checked.

In some cases, a number of specific and sometimes complex operations (such as extracting code, disassembling a software application, reconstructing all the on-line help material, keying in data, scanning a document, transferring videos, writing down the script, installing a file in a computer-assisted translation system, etc.) have to be carried out before the translation can start.

In the case of large-scale projects involving many different operators, a project manager will establish a work plan defining who does what and when, for when, and using what resources.

The process can be analysed in more detail as follows:

– the translator takes delivery of the material to be translated (any kind of material), checks it and makes it fit and ready for translation;

– the translator analyses the material to be translated;

– the translator looks for and processes any information required to help her/him get a full understanding of the material and clear up any ambiguous points (this may entail searching for the relevant documentation, studying the technical process or the product involved, being trained in how to use the product or materials involved, etc.);

– the translator assembles all the raw materials required to carry out the job (i.e. relevant terminology, phraseology, sentence structures or phrase templates, as well as previously translated material, etc.). In many cases, the raw materials come as one or more translation memories and dictionaries that may have to be upgraded prior to reuse;

– the translator sets up the version for translation/retranslation in the appropriate environment, complete with available resources;

– the translator translates the material – which, in some cases, may mean quite a lot of adapting, reorganising, and restructuring;

– the translator (or reviser) checks and revises the draft translation;

– corrections or amendments are made;

– the final version is validated;

– the translated material is formatted according to specifications, integrated or embedded into whatever product or medium is applicable (video, sound track, printed page, etc.) before being transferred to the relevant medium (disk, CD, DVD, Web site, etc.) This maybe part of the translator s job though it is usually taken care of by specialist operators;

– the final version is delivered to the translator s client.

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Submitted by: Allan Starr

Recently, our marketing agency in Phoenix commissioned a sampling survey of the 8,000-plus subscribers to our newsletter. We did it in order to get a handle on a profile of our readership across many categories. We found that the majority are 29-54 years of age and are either an entrepreneur, a general manager or sales and marketing executive for a (on average) 36-employee firm.

Something else of interest was our discovery that out of the 282 individual communities represented by our readership, a full 68% were in marketing areas of well over one million residents. And because, as they say, all business is local, it got us thinking about the importance of the visibility within a community of a marketing agency, or any other kind of business.

Regardless of what percentage of your business is national in scope, even placed by decision makers in far away places in some instances, you must have a broad-based local contact network for things like supply chain support and referrals. In order to reduce your community to a manageable size, it is desirable to have as strong a presence as possible where you are based.

Rising like a Phoenix

Like that mythological, rising Phoenix Bird that rises from the ashes, the Phoenix, AZ of my birth, to this day, our headquarters, has risen from a community of some 100,000 to become the nation s 5th-largest city, fast approaching four million persons. Obviously, the local marketplace of today bears little resemblance to that of 34 years ago when our company was founded.

As a boy in the 40s, walking down Central Avenue with my dad became a seemingly endless succession of him greeting friends and the exchange of pleasantries. Today in Phoenix, one can spend the better part of a day in the midst of a crowd and see nary a familiar face. Alas, what is one to do in order to gain even a glint of recognition, let alone become a household word?

We’ll leave the proposition of becoming a household word to those dealing with Verizon- or McDonald’s-sized marketing budgets and, for our purposes, relate this message to those among us who have smaller-niche prospect groups, yet feel a need for visibility within them. What it comes down to is that old marketing line that goes, “If you want to hunt elephants, you ve got to go where the elephants are.”

Advertising, and publicity releases aside, to me what this axiom speaks of is the concept of “rubbing elbows” with the decision makers you seek to attract. To network with them through memberships in organizations is the obvious answer. But because your time is your most precious commodity, the emphasis must be on selectivity.

And — take it from a wizened old “networker,” surface superficiality does not “cut it” on the networking art s best practices chart. Rather, the magic word is involvement. You must, over a protracted period of time, become immersed in the organizations you choose, up to and including leadership roles. In short, the key is to become a “household word” within smaller but carefully selected community segment`s.

Making an investment

There is one more key word to consider in any discussion of networking. That word is investment. And, I refer not just to your time and money, which are givens with any meaningful affiliation, but an investment of your abilities, input and effort. The success and recognition gained from any group involvement will be in direct proportion to what it is you have contributed to the advancement of the mission of that particular group.

About the Author: Allan Starr founded Marketing Partners of Arizona in 1976, which serves a local, regional and national clientele with services including strategic marketing, advertising, public relations, sponsorship procurement, e-mail marketing, Website optimization and other online initiatives. Starr is former governor of the SW District of the AAF, two-term president of The AZSBA and served six terms on the board of directors of The Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce.

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