Media Law Case Study, AeU, Malaysia The Plaintiff, The Publisher Of A Free Five-Days-A-Week National English-Language Newspaper Called ‘The Sun’

The plaintiff, the publisher of a free five-days-a-week national English-language newspaper called ‘the Sun’, sued the defendant for negligence, defamation, and malicious falsehood for reporting in its annual Nielsen Media Index (‘NMI’) market surveys that the Sun’s readership lagged far behind that of the two other English-language dailies in the country.

Readership of newspapers and magazines was just one part of the NMI which was a random survey carried out over the whole of Peninsular Malaysia to gauge consumer tastes and habits for a wide variety of goods and services. The plaintiff claimed that the defendant’s surveys under-represented the Sun’s readership causing advertisers to shun the newspaper, thereby causing a loss of advertisement revenue.

The defendant [*605] belonged to a global group of companies operating under the ‘Nielsen brand that was in the business of media, consumer, and market research. The results of the NMI surveys, which began in the year 1968, were published in bi-annual reports for the benefit of the defendant’s subscribers – mainly advertisers and advertising agencies – subject to disclaimers and limitations of liability that the survey data were only estimates and not accurate figures and could contain errors for which the defendant could not be held responsible.