Glenn Del Medico, who retired as the BBC's chief programme legal advisor last year, came to deliver a class to us this afternoon - and he'll be returning every fortnight in future.

His opening class involved defamation: that is, the law governing libellous and slanderous comments, designed to protect the individual from unwarranted damage to their reputation whilst enshrining journalistic (and basic human) rights to freedom of expression. After all, an individual may justifiably have their reputation tarnished if a journalist can prove that their conduct warrants it.

Defamation law is, however, an absolute minefield riddled with uncertainty. There is no hard definition of what constitutes defamation and what does not; only a set of slightly dog-eared maxims to which journalists, lawyers and would-be victims of defamation may turn. I previously thought that media law was applied by journalists to ensure that nothing they publish could defame anyone and result in a lawsuit - in actuality, it is the job of journalists and their lawyers to decide which of the many hundreds of defamations they regularly print is likely to attract a lawsuit. That depends on a gut feeling (David Blunkett is unlikely to sue the makers of 'A Very Social Secretary' for example, though he could well be within his rights) and what defence the publisher thinks it can muster up (in that example, the defence of humour is in fact valid and likely to succeed).

Del Medico talks with great presence and exudes wisdom, so he's a very good teacher to have even before we reach his experience (he has spent his entire working career since the age of 21 as a consultant for the BBC). He provided examples for us to discuss between ourselves and raised some fascinating legal points. He insists that there is no right or wrong in law and I therefore quote him in the knowledge that other lawyers might well contradict what he has to say, but his analysis of a story involving the naming of a 15 year old girl who had become an alleged victim of a sexual offence was intriguing. He explained that if the report claims her alleged attacker has been charged with "sexual offences", the journalist may not name the girl in the article - alleged victims of sexual offences may not be named from the very moment a complaint of that nature is raised by them or on their behalf. By contrast, if the reporter writes that her alleged attach has been charged with "serious offences", and drops the allusion to a sexual offence, he may name the girl without fear of prosecution, even if he knows the offences to be sexual. I presume this leaves editors the dilemma of which is more important, the name of the victim or the nature of the offences which allegedly took place (I suspect, in most instances, the latter).

In other news, I'm already having to start planning my Easter work placement, which is arranged by my course director. We have a choice between a commercial station and the BBC, which is not as clear-cut as some might think. First, it is by no means certain that I will take a job at a commercial station just because I did a placement at one. Second, and even if I did do just that, the low pay at commercial stations is counterbalanced by getting to do lots of things, very quickly. At the BBC it can take months from joining to actually get on air (from what I can tell, my near-daily exposure to the public on Somerset Sound was highly unusual and probably to do with the unusual nature of the station, since it's one of the BBC's smallest). At commercial stations only one or two people might be employed on the news side, one to look after each main shift, so I would be writing and presenting my own bulletins within days of joining. Plus, when my course director worked at a managerial level at BBC London, he says he all but exclusively hired people from the commercial sector, simply because he knew how hard they would have been working for not much money. So a year or two in commercial radio is good training and a way to catch the eye with a CV.

Finally, I got my first assignment back today. Remember the story about the parrot? Well, I had to write up that and two other stories about my local area. I got 7 out of 10. The range in the class was from 6 to 8, and our course director said this was the best first batch he'd ever had from a group, so I'm happy. I now have to follow one story up for this Thursday, whilst tomorrow I'm learning how to conduct telephone interviews in our studio. I have a very cunning plan which involves this, which may or may not come to fruition - we'll see.

Oh and I've not forgotten all that audio I keep promising, it'll make it online sooner or later!