Both Dolphinarium: Catholic bloggers for Libel Reform - Fight for Free Speech and James Preece: Catholics for Libel Reform have highlighted a petition for libel law reform. I agree with it and have signed it.
It is important to have a libel law. If someone writes seriously damaging things about you that are false, you should have some redress against them. To obtain a retraction, an apology, and some reasonable financial compensation is fair enough if your reputation has been seriously damaged. Unfortunately in England at the moment, the libel law can be used to stifle debate, even to prevent scientists from publishing their research freely, and to intimidate people instead of engaging in rational discussion. It is a matter of balance between free speech and the prevention of calumny. We have not got that balance right and therefore I support the reform of the libel law.
4 comments:
Libel law and practice in the UK are in a mess. Our liberty to debate and criticise is unduly constrained. Few, on the other hand, have the resources to take on the financial might of media organisations that have defamed them. That is to say, we seem to have the worst of all worlds. Until this imbalance is corrected we will continue to see its ill effects in our digital and offline media. Society will be the worse for it.
Thank you Father, but what can possibly have provoked this post? Clearly not the recent discussion of Mgr Basil Loftus' actions: Mgr Loftus is an advocate of free speech. Why, he wrote in his Catholic Times column earlier this year (14 March 2010): "The more that an agenda is controlled by superior authority, the less does the true concern of those present manifest itself. An imposed agenda is inimical to genuinely open discussion."
I've sat in on more than a few utterly ludicrous libel trials at the High Court. Robert Maxwell comes to mind. The sooner this ridiculous law is amended the better.
If the current judicially imposed arrangement on privacy were enacted into the statute law, but with the burden of proof in libel actions placed on the plaintiff, then who could object to that? And why?
Making the privacy law statutory as the price of reversing the burden of proof in libel actions. That would be the deal. The corporate media cannot expect their own way all the time.
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