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THE GALLOWAY LIBEL JUDGMENT
From an American point of view, here's the most astounding thing about George Galloway's libel action against the Daily Telegraph for printing captured Iraqi documents that purported to show that the left-wing Member of the British Parliament had requested and received large sums of money from the Saddam Hussein regime: Galloway never challenged the authenticity of these documents.Galloway has won 150,000 pounds plus costs because under British law, it was not enough for the documents to be genuine. Under British law, the Telegraph was obliged additionally to prove that the claims in the document were true: ie, that Saddam not only said he'd paid the money to Galloway, but that he actually had paid the money to Galloway. Such an investigation would of course have taken many additional weeks or months after the discovery of the documents: weeks or months in which the public would have been denied knowledge of the documents' contents or even existence. According to the judge in the case, Justice Eady, the Telegraph had a qualified privilege to print the documents without first proving them true — but only if it reported them "responsibly." Responsibility of course is a quality found very much in the eye of the beholder, and judges may well have a different definition of "responsible" journalism than do journalists or their readers and viewers. Absorb all this for a minute. It's true of course that the British press can be awfully hysterical. You can understand why a judge might want to express his displeasure at the media's excesses. But can it really be the case that the courts of a free country expect that captured enemy official documents of vital public moment be left to languish in prolonged secrecy — or else be handled as if with asbestos tongs by reporters who decline to take a stand one way or another on the documents' contents? Posted by: tipper 2004-12-04 |
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