libel PETE BAKER / PA IMAGES


of solving disputes, but French chose not to do so. [He] left me no choice but to continue with my proceedings… as he unwisely kept trying to stand by what he must by now know was wrong.” Whatever the rights and wrongs of the programme and the response – both journalists have distinguished histories and I have known the latter since the 1980s when he edited radical Welsh magazine Rebecca – the question remains about the use of the law to settle a journalistic dispute. In April, the NUJ will debate a motion that suggests, “the libel laws, and their inevitable costs of tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds, are not the way to solve disputes between journalists”. Journalists have sued each other before. Andrew Neil, while editor of the Sunday Times, brought an action in 1990 against former Sunday Telegraph editor Peregrine Worsthorne over an article headlined ‘Playboys as Editors’, which criticised Neil’s social life. Neil had a token victory with £1,000 in damages. A couple of years ago, Neil, after a suggestion he should sue a columnist who had been rude about him, said: “Journalists shouldn’t sue journalists. I did once and it was a huge mistake.” Former BBC Middle East correspondent Tim Llewellyn


wrote to the BBC about the Ware v French case in 2020 saying, “when journalists put themselves in the public sphere [on] a BBC platform… they must take the knocks. I did, for many years. I could never have imagined going to court, or indeed the BBC allowing me or encouraging me to do so. Journalists are sued; they do not sue, or not in my long experience.”


I


n his new book, ‘Lawfare: How Russians, the Rich and the Government Try to Prevent Free Speech and How to Stop Them’, Geoffrey Robertson KC argues that current libel laws ‘deter and diminish investigative journalism’.


He points out that libel is the only part of the law where the burden of proof is on the defendant and that 95 per cent of cases are won or settled on terms that require the allegation to be withdrawn. He also notes that since the Defamation Act 2013, which introduced the ‘public interest’ defence, juries no longer feature. In 1995, The Guardian was sued by five police officers,


backed by the Police Federation, over an article I wrote three years earlier about a police corruption investigation in Stoke Newington, north London. At the time, the federation had won the 95 successive libel actions it had brought against the press. Only one had gone to trial since almost all papers opted to settle and pay ‘substantial’ damages – in reality, usually around £5,000 – rather than risk the costs of a full-blown trial. In our case, the judge, the late Mr Justic French, was very


sympathetic to the police and told the jury they could award each officer £125,000. We had a supportive editor in Alan Rusbridger and a fine legal team led by the late George Carman, and, crucially, a jury that came down in our favour 10-2. Had we lost – as we would have done had it been the judge’s decision – The Guardian would have faced costs and damages of well over £1 million. The federation was left with a bill of £700,000. Libel cases and the issues that provoke them can take years to resolve. On December 14 last year, more than three years after the Panorama broadcast, the BBC, in its corrections and clarifications column, referred to a contentious interview in


the programme. It suggested that if it were to be re-broadcast ‘to give viewers further context’, the full interview would be printed (this can be read at https://tinyurl.com/mwhw6ykv). Ware has said the comments ‘became mixed up in the editing… a relatively minor slip’. French sees it differently. Can the NUJ open the debate on how best to reach a


resolution without incurring vast costswhen a journalist feels badly damaged by another’s work? Ideas have been floated: one Leveson recommendation – never implemented – was for anyone seeking to sue a news publisher that belonged to a recognised regulator, to be obliged to go through low-cost arbitration. Another could be a forum where former readers’ editors or media lawyers negotiate corrections and apologies. What better place to launch the discussion than within the union whose members are most affected by it and in London, the city now known derisively in US legal circles as ‘a town called Sue’.


Duncan Campbell is a former Guardian crime correspondent and author of We’ll All Be Murdered in Our Beds! a history of crime reporting


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