Like our unwritten constitution which still frames us as “subjects” of the monarch rather than citizens, the libel laws of England and Wales—though reformed two years ago—still construe libel in terms of what the rich and powerful may lose by others writing anything about them.
This is in contrast to the U.S. tradition of the First Amendment which, as cited by Justice William Brennan cited in the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in 1964 implies: “a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.”
The threat of libel sends a chill down the spine of any investigative journalist.
Say you’re looking at money laundering by a Russian oligarch, or the criminal empire of a major underworld gangster: you don’t fear the hit man with his baseball bat so much as the subject’s libel lawyers who can pin you down in a year’s worth of disclosure and legal bickering even if you’ve painstakingly documented every crime.
The nuisance effect of vexatious claims means that one of the biggest elements in the budget of any publication is their legal fighting fund, and many investigations—like that of the multiple claims of child abuse by TV personality and DJ Jimmy Savile before his death in 2011—are strangled at birth.
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