Christmas and New Year were hectic for media law watchers, with developments on many fronts.

The ‘Suffolk murders’ arrests saw the Attorney General issue a formal, if somewhat vague, warning about prejudicial reporting, as the media explored the limits of the contempt laws, and commentators highlighted difficult “value judgments” to be made.

One national newspaper went as far as to publish a front-page photograph of suspect Steve Wright with his hands round the throat of a woman, captioned ‘Is THIS the strangler?’. Another published a letter written by the defendant awaiting trial, proclaiming his innocence.

Meanwhile, Prince Charles won a ruling from the Court of Appeal that his journal, containing political comments about the handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese, was private and confidential, even though he had sent copies to dozens of people.

Their Lordships also ruled that publication was restricted by his copyright in the work, and that it was not in the public interest for confidence and privacy to be overridden by further publication. The ruling was roundly criticised in The Times by David Pannick QC for failing to give “public interest” arguments sufficient weight.

Elsewhere, a major policy change from the Government threatens to neuter the Freedom of Information Act. Currently, public authorities can refuse to answer a request if the cost of finding the information exceeds £450, or in the case of government departments, £650.

The Government’s draft Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2007, out to consultation until 8th March 2007, propose that they should also be allowed to count the time spent deciding what to do about FoI requests towards those fee limits.

And in a separate move, MP David Maclean introduced a Private Members Bill to exempt from FoI disclosure all correspondence between MPs and local authorities.

Over at the Press Complaints Commission, the PCC ruled that a national newspaper had acted satisfactorily in offering supermodel Kate Moss merely a correction, rather than an apology, after it reported an uncle’s inaccurate claim that she was pregnant.

The PCC also rejected a complaint from a man who claimed accurate press reports of his being a “dwarf” breached Clause 12 (Discrimination) of the PCC Code.

In other news, a private detective received an 18-month community penalty for breaching S.55 Data Protection Act by impersonating individuals to obtain their personal data from companies and banks – part of the Information Commissioner’s ‘get tough’ attitude to misuse of personal information.