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Analyse and Assess the Pros and Cons of the Libel Defences of Justification and Fair Comment

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Analyse and assess the pros and cons of the libel defences of justification and fair comment with reference to a minimum of three case studies Libel law in England is incredibly tough, so much so, that if found to be liable of a defamatory statement, ‘a statement which lowers someone in the eyes of reasonable people...’ [Quinn 2009: 210] the consequences can be very costly to both the journalist themselves and their newspapers and therefore it is very important for the defences of defamation to be used to full effect an example of this is libel tourism and the case of involving Roman Polanski 2005. The magazine had said that the event had take place before the claimant’s wife’s funeral, but it had in fact taken …show more content…

This was shown in the case of Branson v Bower (No.1) where the claimant tried to sue on the grounds that the comment made could be taken as statement of fact. The court of appeal disagreed, stating that it was clear that the statement published by the defendant was an opinion. Another advantage of this defence is that much like that of justification, the defendant must not prove that each of the facts in the publication to be true, as long as they can prove that those facts commented on were true. In the case of Galloway v Telegraph Group Ltd (2006) the defendants claimed that they had based opinions upon facts they believed to be true about the claimant. The defendants pleaded fair comment but this was refused by the court stating that ‘the stories were allegations of fact’ [Quinn 2009: 217]. Again, a disadvantage of this defence, much like that of justification, is that it is the defendant’s responsibility to prove that ‘the underlying facts are true. If he or she is unable to do so, then the defence will fail.’ [3] This appeared in a case involving Gordon Ramsey, where the defendant during a review complained that some scenes within the show were staged. The defendant could not back up these claims and consequently had to pay £75,000 in damages. Another advantage to the

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