Judgment Summarising The Law In Relation To The Defence Of Qualified Privilege

Iqbal v Geo Tv Ltd [2023] EWHC 3024 (KB)

Case background

The Claimant is the founder and president of ARY Digital Network, one of the leading news broadcasters in Pakistan. GEO News is also a leading news channel in Pakistan. The Defendant is part of the group that broadcasts GEO News in the UK.

The Claimant issued libel proceedings in respect of a series of broadcasts by the Defendant on GEO News. These broadcasts were in relation to a political rally held on 19 May 2022. At the rally, serious allegations were made about the Claimant including his connection with former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan.

The Defendant applied for summary judgment relying on the defence of statutory qualified privilege in accordance with Section 15 of the Defamation Act 1996 (DA 1996). Section 15 provides that the:

Schedule I includes fair and accurate reports of press conferences of a matter of a matter of public interest and public meetings.

To be successful in their summary judgment application the Defendant would therefore need to prove that:

The Judge was satisfied that the rally was a public meeting and that the broadcasts were a fair and accurate report of the rally. The Defendant had therefore successfully proven points 1 – 3.

The broadcasts on a matter of public interest and public benefit

The Judge considered whether the broadcasts were published on a matter of public interest and for the public benefit. The Judge confirmed that this would be a question of fact and would need to be decided objectively. The Judge considered the relevant authorities in this area and determined that significant weight would need to be put on whether the defendant knew, or should have known, that the allegations being made were disputed and/or untrue.

The Claimant argued that it cannot be for the public’s benefit to broadcast defamatory allegations especially when the allegations and facts disproving the allegations were already in the public domain. The Defendant accepted that the allegations were widely known but argued that it would be contrary to public interest to require the media to fact-check political speeches before broadcasting. The Judge did accept this point and acknowledged that a publisher does not have to fact-check what is said or trawl through content looking for past denials.

The Judge did however feel that the Defendant had not submitted sufficient evidence as to what they had already known about the allegations. The Judge therefore decided that this was not an issue that could be determined summarily as each party had an arguable case.

Malice

The Judge referred to the case of Huda v Wells in which Nicklin J summarised malice as:

By virtue of the above, to determine whether the report had been made with malice, the Court would need to look at whether the Defendant knew the allegations were false or reckless as to their truth. As confirmed above, the Judge felt that the Defendant had not dealt with this point in evidence and therefore given the overlap between this point and the public interest/public benefit point, both issues could not be determined summarily and the matter would need to proceed to trial.

The Defendant’s summary judgment application was therefore dismissed.

Comment

This case is a useful summary of the law surrounding the defence of reports protected by privilege. It is also a reminder that one of the important factors in deciding whether this defence would apply is the extent to which the defendant knew the allegations complained of had been contested. Had the Defendant in this case dealt with this point in evidence, their summary judgment application may have been successful.