Reform of English libel law
Jonathan Lee
Defamation ‘consists in publishing a false statement about the plaintiff which tends to lower him or her in the estimation of right- thinking members of the community generally, or which tends to cause him or her to be shunned or avoided, or which bring him or her into hatred, ridicule, or contempt, or which tend to discredit him or her in his or her trade or profession,’ 2 and is a form of tort – the infringement of the civil rights of other individuals. Libel is a category under the tort of defamation, which refers to the publication of defamatory materials in a permanent and recorded form such as on television, in the press and on a blog. For the general public, libel is rarely directly related to one’s daily life. One may imagine libel law only concerns those in the fields of journalism, business and politics; and people will not be sued as long as they are careful with what they publish and get the facts straight. This is undeniably true, but there is a lot more to defamation law than simply a matter of getting the facts straight in a publication. In order to understand the significance of defamation law to our society, we should start by understanding the defences available to the defendant in litigation. There are four defences to an action for libel, namely justification, absolute privilege, qualified privilege, and fair comment. The defence of justification simply means that a statement cannot be deemed defamatory if it can be proved to be true – ‘It is a complete answer to an action for defamation for the defendant to prove that the statement he published is substantially true.’ 3 Absolute privilege allows individuals involved in judicial proceedings or discussions in the Parliamentto express themselves without defamatory restrictions – ‘The defence of absolute privilege protects defamatory
statements when made in the course of legislative, judicial, and other official proceedings i.e. statements made in court proceedings or in the parliament.’ 4 Qualified privilege allows individuals to make honest opinions in certain occasions ‘when the person to whom a statement is made has a special interest in learning the honestly held views of another person, even if those views are defamatory of someone else and cannot be proved to be true.’ 5 Quoting the words of Lord Atkinson, ‘. . . a privileged occasion is . . . an occasion where the person who makes a communication has an interest or a duty, legal, social, or moral, to make it to the person to whom it is made, and the person to whom it is so made has a corresponding interest or duty to receive it. This reciprocity is essential.’ 6 The case of Watt v. Longsdon 7 can be used to illustrate this defence. The director of a company informing the chairman of alleged sexual misconduct involving Mr Watt is deemed to be a privileged communication. However, the act of informing Mr Watt’s wife about the allegations is not. This defence protects individuals who provide ‘honestly held views when the interest [of the person in knowing the views] is of sufficient importance to outweigh the need to protect reputation.’ 8 The defence of fair comment ‘protects honest expressions on matters of public interest.’ 9 This defence, in reality, may be the most importantone as it governs and protects the freedom of speech of journalists and critics. The defence consists of two restrictions – the comment must be on ‘matters of public interest’ and it must be ‘fair’. According to Lord Denning M.R., ‘Whenever a matter is such as to affect people at large, so that they may be legitimately interested in, or
4 Ibid. p.54 5 Davies v. Snead (1870) L.R. 5 Q.B. 608, 611 6 Adam v. Ward [1917] A.C. 309, 334 7 Watt v. Longsdon [1930] 1 K.B. 130. 8 Davies v. Snead op.cit. 9 Ibid. p.54
2 Wacks, R. (2008) Law: A Very Short Introduction p.53 3 Wacks, R. op.cit. p.54
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