About Me
- Dan Byron
- is a partner at Bingham Greenebaum Doll, Indianapolis office, who performs pro bono work in addition to his practice of law in the media area. For a more complete description of his work and history please see his biography listed above on this home page. Much of his pro bono work is meant to advance the interests of free press and free speech in foreign countries including Africa and Mongolia.
Map of Ghana
2 comments:
hi Dan!! i figured it out. take care Paul J
Dan, I have been reading about your travels and work in my old haunt (80s and early 90s). I thought you might be interested to know what the local press have been saying about your talks. Here is a link to an item to the story I just came across. I am reproducing the full article, just in case there is a problem with the link.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200711121454.html
Great work, renowned man, as the press say.
George Dally
Chicago
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Ghana: Journalist to Spurn Attack On Personalities
Public Agenda (Accra)
12 November 2007
Posted to the web 12 November 2007
Frederick Asiamah And Elizabeth Naa Atswei Mensah
Lawyer Daniel Byron, a renowned American media lawyer has advised journalists to recoil from the act of attacking personalities which can lead them to being jailed or paying huge amounts of money as compensation.
He also cautioned journalists never to rush into judgment on an issue but to do complete investigation for a good conclusion and seek to give a balance to their stories.
Lawyer Byron was giving a public lecture on Media Law to journalists and student journalist in Accra on Thursday on the topic "Media Law -It's Alive and Kicking in the United States (US)." It was organized by the Media Foundation for West Africa.
"The law of defamation must be recognized in Ghana just as it is in the US," he advocated.
Nevertheless, he explained that opinion statements are outside the defamation law and therefore no journalist can be sued when he or she expresses an opinion.
He noted that there is a controversy over freedom of information; and that is the right of the public to know and the individual's right to privacy.
According to him, once a person chooses to become a public figure or a personality that person has only a little right to privacy while corporate bodies do not enjoy any right to privacy because it is only human beings who enjoy privacy.
He stressed that when an individual is involved in any public act such as accident, crime, rape, etc., that person becomes a public figure and therefore the media have every right to information on the person.
Lawyer Byron said the protection of confidential sources should be an utmost priority to the media because it is only through these sources that they will be able to get exclusive stories.
He stressed that the failure of a journalist to protect his or her source of information will lead to that journalist having dry sources.
He said the Federal Law in the US protects sources except under the case of National Security: but this gives the state the power to use the National Security issue as an excuse to persuade journalists to disclose their sources of information.
He mentioned that the need for the media and the public to have knowledge of what government is doing and how it makes its decisions is too strong to be denied.
However, he pleaded for the free flow of information which is working in the US to be adopted in Ghana for national development.
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