We celebrate the news that the High Court has dismissed two ‘weak’ libel actions. We welcome the Free Speech is not For Sale campaign to reform Britain’s libel laws. We believe in Article 10 and freedom of expression. But we fear that Roy Greenslade, writing on the foregoing in the Guardian, is guilty of a cheap shot against Mr Justice Eady.
Summarising the way in which two judges, Mrs Justice Sharp and Mr Justice Tugendhat, rejected claims brought by fashion designer Petra Ecclestone and a company called LonZim against, respectively, the Daily Telegraph and South African weekly the Financial Mail, the good professor applauds the decisions but offers this by way of a barbed pay-off par:
I can’t help but note that neither of these actions came before Mr Justice Eady. Would he have reached similar conclusions, I wonder?
We shall never know, but our experience is that judges tend to apply the law. If a libel action lacks merit, it is as likely to be dismissed by Eady J. as anyone. Indeed, Mr Justice Eady has sent more than a few spurious claims packing in his time. His crime, however, seems to have been to apply the existing law of confidence so as to encourage development of a more rounded privacy law, something espoused by many in the media, not least Professor Greenslade’s paymasters at the Guardian. But following the lead of Mail editor Paul Dacre, it has been open season on the poor judge. His every judgment is condemned as inimical to the media, regardless of the facts of the case before him. Eady J. is portrayed as the avatar of suppression so often that he has become a journalistic trope.
We don’t like journalistic tropes. They’re lazy and serve no one well, least of readers (though they do make for easy copy for hacks in a hurry). We’re surprised to see a man of Professor Greenslade’s pedigree stooping to this level.
Enjoyable image courtesy of AMooseinBrighton.
