Good morning from the team at Press Gazette on Thursday, 16 July.

🗽 US tech platforms bang the drum for freedom of expression. Their entire business models hinge on being able to publish pretty much whatever they like without fear of being sued for defamation or breach of privacy. As The New York Times and others are finding, it is also incredibly hard to sue them for breach of copyright when they steal stuff.

Now a Press Gazette investigation has revealed how Google and other tech platforms are colluding with repressive regimes and sketchy organisations to scrub thousands of legitimate stories from the internet.

Two Press Gazette articles were recently removed from search after bogus requests were made to Google under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act. We can now reveal the automation of such requests has become a major issue for website publishers.

Google is taking down legitimate reports after receiving clearly bogus complaints without telling anyone and without conducting even basic checks to see if the claims are true.

READ THE FULL STORY

⚖️ The Daily Mail may have won the big one - its privacy case against Prince Harry and others - but yesterday it lost a legal claim in the Court of Appeal over a misleading headline juxtaposition published about the energy entrepreneur Dale Vince.

After failing in a libel action, Vince successfully pursued a data protection case.

It’s a significant ruling, because it accepts that many no longer read entire articles - they just skim headlines and pictures. So first impressions count and publishers can now be sued for defamation even if the article (when read in its entirety) will make it abundantly clear the claimant did nothing wrong.

READ THE FULL STORY

😩 The Daily Mail also agreed yesterday to pay substantial damages to ITV Loose Women panellist Nadia Sawalha and her husband, director and producer Mark Adderley.

The publication apologised for an article which it said falsely gave the impression that the pair had made statements which suggested “support for terrorism or hatred of Jews”.

READ THE FULL STORY

🤏 News In Brief

The New York Times has filed a motion to quash subpoenas issued by the Trump administration to several of its journalists. The subpoenas sought to force the journalists to testify about their confidential sources before a federal grand jury in Manhattan. (NYT)

Bauer has appointed Frances Hedges as editor of Grazia, moving from Harper’s Bazaar UK where she has been deputy editor since 2019.

Business Insider has said since its editor-in-chief Jamie Heller joined two years ago, the amount of “original content” it publishes has more than doubled. In 2024 around 40% of its content was scoops, exclusives, and other original stories, with increasing to 80% today. (Nieman Lab)

Ex-director of BBC Television Danny Cohen has said: "It is very disappointing to see the incoming prime minister give one of his very first interviews to Gary Lineker, who left the BBC after sharing a post about Zionism.” The interview was shared to the Youtube account of Lineker’s production company Goalhanger on Wednesday afternoon.(