Duncan Campbell looks at the issue of journalists suing each other S


hould journalists sue other journalists for libel for attacking their work? This question is due to be asked at this year’s delegate meeting in London in late April. The debate has been prompted by the libel


action brought by John Ware (pictured), who made the 2019 BBC Panorama programme, Is Labour Anti-Semitic?, against freelance Paddy French, author of a pamphlet that heavily criticised the programme under the title, Is the BBC anti- Labour? and accused Ware of being a ‘rogue journalist’. In November, Ware was awarded £90,000 in damages and £300,000 in costs after French declined to attend court on the day the trial was due to start. The case prompted the call from the London Freelance Branch – of which French is a member – for the union to seek other ways of resolving such disputes. Last year was the year of the libel. In July, Rebekah Vardy lost


her multi-million-pound action against Coleen Rooney over the latter’s claim that she had leaked information about her to the Sun. By November, this had inspired both a West End play and a Channel 4 drama. Meanwhile, the government said it planned to legislate over strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) as they had a ‘chilling effect’ on media freedom. For journalists, two libel cases were of particular interest. In June, the Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr won the action brought against her by Brexiteer Arron Banks over what she had said about him in a TED talk in 2019. Banks appealed against this decision and in February the appeal court ruled in his favour on one of three grounds. This means he will receive damages, yet to be assessed, although the court found against him on the other two grounds. It was the Ware v French case that raised the issue of


whether journalists should sue each other. Ware was asked about this during the brief court hearing last November by


12 | theJournalist 95%


of the cases are won or settled on terms that require the allegation to be withdrawn


Mr Justice Knowles, who told the court that his father had been a journalist. Ware said this was “whiskery nostalgia… a pre-social media unwritten rule but it certainly doesn’t apply now”. He said French had ‘slithered away’ by his non- attendance: this failure to attend court led the judge to award an additional £40,000 to the £50,000 Ware had sought. French says of his non-attendance: “After a two-and-a-half-


year battle, I reluctantly took the decision to withdraw…. Ever since juries were dispensed with in libel actions, the public interest defence has been left to judges to decide. The case should never have been brought. The pamphlet…


had a print run of just 300 copies and cost a mere £140. The number of people who read it is probably around the 10,000 mark. Compare that with the media firepower John Ware can command. In July 2020, for example, he wrote an article for the Daily Mail entitled ‘Why I had to go to war with Labour’s vile attack dogs’. This includes me as one of the ‘pro-Corbyn conspiracy theorists’ who ‘disregard the most basic rules that govern mainstream journalism’. The readership of this will have been over a million.Ware defends his action, saying “the world has indeed changed, and French and others seem to have been emboldened by this… He accused me of fundamental dishonesty, that I had deliberately set out to deceive, that although I’d known X, I deliberately disseminated Y. It doesn’t get more serious than that in our trade. And, in this particular case, it was especially serious since I was working for the publicly funded BBC… Suing was a last resort. Even after I issued a claim, French chose to double and treble down by standing by his false thesis… for me, the key was not money but a proper apology.” He now says he would have been happy to accept £500 in


damages had French apologised, agreed to discuss costs and publish the court’s judgment. “I agree that there are other ways


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