The House of Lords has rejected an appeal by two members of the British National Party against a decision that an article about them in the anti-fascist Searchlight magazine is protected from a defamation action by the reportage defence.Brothers Barry and Christopher Roberts had petitioned the House of Lords for permission to appeal against the Court of Appeal's decision upholding the judgment of Mr Justice Eady that the article was protected by the reportage defence. In their petition to the House of Lords, the Roberts brothers had argued that journalists must always verify allegations of criminal conduct.
The brothers had sued journalist Gerry Gable, Steve Silver, editor of Searchlight magazine, and its publisher, Searchlight Magazine Ltd, over an article which appeared in the magazine in 2003. It reported a dispute within the BNP, including allegations that Christopher Roberts stole money collected at a BNP rally, and allegations that the claimants made threats to others, and that they might be subject to a police investigation.
Mr Justice Eady upheld the reportage privilege in a decision in May 2006.
In July last year Lord Justice Ward, upholding that decision in the Court of Appeal, said a review of the authorities showed that a journalist had a good defence to a claim for libel if what he published, even without trying to verify its truth, amounted to reportage. The best description of "reportage" was that it was "the neutral reporting without adoption or embellishment or subscribing to any belief in its truth of attributed allegations of both sides of a political and possibly some other kind of dispute", he said.
The reportage defence, a form of qualified privilege, was first established in Al-Fagih v HH Saudi Research and Marketing (UK) Ltd.
The House of Lords rejected the Roberts brothers' petition for permission to appeal on January 31. As is usual, the Law Lords gave no reason for the decision. Had the petition been granted and appeal gone ahead, it would have been the first time that the House of Lords had considered the reportage defence.
Press Gazette
5 comments:
Well what a surprise, you never win when you go up against the state. Very naive on the part of the Robert's brothers.
The original High Court decision against BNP fanatics Barry and Christopher Roberts:
http://www.onebrickcourt.co.uk/cases.asp?id=62
Roberts & Anor v Gable & Anor [2006] EWHC 1025 (QB
Case Date: 12/05/2006
Court: High Court
Area of Law: Defamation
FACTS
The Claimants, brothers Christopher and Barry Roberts were active members of the BNP who had stood as candidates in the last general election. They brought libel proceedings against the publisher and editor of the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight and the writer of the article complained of. The article formed part of a series which covered in-fighting between rival factions of the BNP in London.
The Claimants alleged that the articles meant that:
1. Christopher stole money collected at a BNP rally and;
2. did not return it until threatened with being reported to the police;
3. both Claimants threatened to kneecap, torture and kill two members of the rival faction and their families;and
4. both Claimants might be subject to police investigation.
The Defendants relied on the defences of justification and the ‘reportage’ form of Reynolds qualified privilege, as explained by the Court of Appeal in Al-Fagih v HH Saudi Research and Marketing (UK) Ltd [2002] EMLR 215. The ‘reportage’ defence was tried as a preliminary issue.
HELD
Eady J upheld the defence of privilege for the following reasons:
· The article reported the allegations without adopting or endorsing them.
· There is a duty (“social or moral”) upon political commentators generally to cover the goings-on in political parties, including disputes, fully and impartially.
· The public was entitled to know about such allegations since the BNP was presenting itself before the electorate of London, and especially since the allegations originally made against the BNP members whose counter allegations against the claimants were contained in the present article had already been reported.
· It was clear that readers would be well aware of the writer’s antipathy to the BNP and that he was merely reporting the conflicting positions rather than taking sides with either. They could hardly conclude that he had been present as an eye-witness and would, therefore, realise that he was not in a position to espouse one version or the other.
· The interest to the reader lay in the fact that the allegations and cross-allegations of criminal offences were being made by BNP factions against each other, rather than their truth or falsity.
Eady J also said that although Lord Nicholls ten factors did "not necessarily fit the reportage template", it was "still no doubt right to have them in mind". It is not entirely clear from the judgment what he meant by this last observation. However, he went on to hold that, on the facts of the case, most of the 10 factors were inapplicable. This may indicate that in assessing whether a ‘reportage’ defence is available, the Nicholls criteria will often be of limited value. As Eady J himself put it, his analysis of the relevance of each of the criteria to the facts of the case before him made it apparent why, in his view, "Lord Nicholls´ tests did not comfortably fit into a reportage case."
Barry Roberts, the nazi BNP’s candidate in Lewisham, was a regular at meetings of the neo-nazi terrorist group Combat 18, joining the C18 security group at Holocaust denial meetings. Barry Roberts is little more than a hardcore nazi. Glad he lost his attempt to stifle freedom of speech and expression. No surrender to the BNP, no surrender to fascism!
It must be such a laugh in the BNP:
"brothers Christopher and Barry Roberts threatened to kneecap and kill two fellow BNP members and their families".
Crazy kids those Roberts brothers.
http://www.ppa.co.uk/cgi-bin/go.pl/legal/article.html?uid=10677&topic_uid=43
"Anonymous said...
It must be such a laugh in the BNP:
"brothers Christopher and Barry Roberts threatened to kneecap and kill two fellow BNP members and their families".
Crazy kids those Roberts brothers.
http://www.ppa.co.uk/cgi-bin/go.pl/legal/article.html?uid=10677&topic_uid=43
9:50 AM, February 08, 2008"
Griffin must like them. He gave them £1000 in cash toward their defence from membership money.
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