Rachel Riley Wins Defamation Case Against Political Blogger

TV presenter, Rachel Riley, was recently awarded damages of £50,000 in her defamation case against the political blogger, Mike Sivier, who had accused her of bullying a teenage girl online.

Case background

In 2019, Rachel Riley tweeted criticism of antisemitism within the Labour Party which led to a heated online debate with a 16-year-old girl and an interview with The Times revealing that Rachel Riley would be given extra security due to the abuse she received online.

In response, Mike Sivier wrote a blog calling Rachel Riley “a hypocrite for complaining about receiving abuse while saying nothing about her, her friend’s and her followers’ harassment of [the girl]”. The article was published online and shared via Twitter.

Rachel Riley brought a claim of defamation against Mike Sivier in 2019. Mike Sivier sought to defend the claim by pleading the defences of truth, honest opinion and publication on a matter of public interest. Rachel Riley had successfully struck out his defence. However, on appeal, the Court of Appeal set aside the decision to strike out the entirety of the defence and allowed the defence of publication on a matter of public interest to proceed to trial (for further details of the appeal see here).

At trial, the Court looked at three main issues:

Serious harm to reputation

Section 1(1) of the Defamation Act 2013 provides that:

The Court first considered the gravity and the extent of the publication by looking at data regarding the number of views of the blog, which included a breakdown of monthly and daily views and trends of views changing throughout the period, and arrived at a figure of 50,000 people who had read the article.

The Court then considered whether the article has caused serious harm to Rachel Riley’s reputation. Mike Sivier relied upon earlier publications by others on the same topic to say that no serious harm has been caused to Rachel Riley’s already bad reputation by his article.

The Court rejected Mike Sivier’s argument. The Court upheld the rule in the case of Dingle v Associated Newspapers Ltd [1964] AC 371, which states that it is not legitimate for a defendant to seek to reduce the harm by proving other publications have injured the claimant’s reputation by way of similar publications (for more information see our previous blog). If Mike Sivier intended to rely on Rachel Riley’s pre-existing bad reputation, he needed to call witnesses to testify on Rachel Riley’s reputation in the relevant sector that the blog spoke of, but no such evidence had been called in the trial.

The Court considered the online readership of 50,000 people significant and therefore the harm caused to Rachel Riley’s reputation is serious.

Public interest defence

The defence of publication on a matter of public interest is contained in section 4 of the Defamation Act 2013. The Court discerned three questions to be answered positively by Mike Sivier in order to succeed in establishing the defence:

The answer to the first question was not disputed by the parties. Rachel Riley accepted that Mike Sivier’s article contained statements on matters of public interest such as online bullying and harassment, the power of an adult celebrity compared to the relative powerlessness of a minor suffering anxiety, mental health, antisemitism and the public conduct of a prominent public figure in broadcast media and online platforms such as Twitter.

The Court scrutinised closely the time that Mike Sivier took to write the blog and concluded that it was written at speed in an hour or two immediately before publication. The Court accepted that Mike Sivier was motivated by his own political allegiance to publish the article and that he would have viewed the promotion of those political interests in the public interest and thus accepted that Mike Sivier honestly believed that he was acting in the public interest.

However, the Court considered Mike Sivier’s belief to be wholly unreasonable. Having considered the evidence of his alleged preparation of the article and the materials he referred to, the Court found that Mike Sivier would not have conducted sufficient research and inquiries before writing and publishing his article. His article misrepresented the evidential picture and was wholly unbalanced as it omitted Rachel Riley’s previous denial of some of the allegations. Mike Sivier’s failure to give Rachel Riley an opportunity to comment prior to publication was also a key factor in the Court’s decision against him on the third question, especially when allegations made in the article contained assumptions.

Comment

The Court has made a thorough analysis of the reasonableness requirement of the public interest defence and given insightful guidance on how this requirement is applied to the evidence. The Court has scrutinised in depth Mike Sivier’s journalistic process, including the time he spent on research and writing, the materials he relied upon and the general impression and language of the article, to ascertain if any belief he held was reasonable. This is a reminder from the Court that if commentators wish to write about public interest issues that may potentially be defamatory, a detailed record must be kept of any research and references.

It is also important to note that the Court took into account the torrent of tweets between Rachel Riley, the girl and others, as well as other online publications on the issue in ascertaining whether the elements of defamation and the defence had been established. In today’s prevalent culture of online trolling and bullying, this may be a sign of caution that we should all be mindful of what we post and share online.

If you have questions about whether your publication may raise an issue of defamation, or if you may be a victim of defamation, please contact our specialist team for legal advice.