Page 51 - Law and the Media

Law and the Media
any unsavoury incident, however old, from a person’s distant past. However, relying on fairly
old incidents to support an allegation of present misbehaviour will frequently fail. For
example, to call someone a thief on the basis that the person committed minor theft several
years ago is actionable as a libel unless the defendant can prove that the person still has
dishonest tendencies.

On the other hand, relevant incidents that have occurred after the offending publication can
also be relied upon to support the generality of the defamatory allegation and are likely to
carry more weight and less likely to backfire than minor misdemeanours from the claimant’s
distant past. In reality, there is nothing about a person’s private life that cannot be published
with virtual impunity as long as it is true.

Criminal convictions
The existence of criminal convictions on a claimant’s record frequently appears as the
cornerstone to the ‘particulars’ that must be pleaded in support of a defence of justification.
Allegations of criminality, for example dishonesty, drug taking or violence, are among the
commonest categories of libellous statement.

There was a time when the fact that a person had been convicted and sentenced for a
crime was not, for libel purposes, conclusive proof of his guilt. In 1964 Alfred Hinds sued
for libel over a Sunday newspaper story headed ‘They Called Me the Iron Man’. It was the
story of Detective Superintendent Herbert Sparks, who, 11 years earlier, had given
evidence that led to Hinds’ conviction and 10-year sentence for robbery. The newspaper
reported Sparks’ assertion that Hinds was guilty as charged. The criminal trial that led to
the conviction lasted for two days. The subsequent libel action took 26 days to go over
precisely the same issue and produced the opposite result. In the event, the jury awarded
the claimant £1300.

As a result of Section 13 of the Civil Evidence Act 1968, criminals can no longer secure
what amounts to a retrial by bringing a libel action, and the media can refer to convictions
without having to worry about proving they are correct. However, by reason of the
Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 the media does not have uninhibited reference to
previous convictions. Although this Act concerns only the narrow area of old convictions,
it represents a significant departure from one of the basic principles of libel law that truth
is a complete defence.

In essence, Section 8 of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act states that where the
publication of a ‘spent’ conviction is ‘made with malice’, a defendant to libel proceedings
shall not be entitled to reply on a plea of justification. In other words, where malice is
proved the claimant’s crimes will be treated for the purposes of his libel action as if they
had never occurred. While there may be good logical and moral reasons for why the past
sins of a reformed criminal should not be allowed to wreck his rehabilitation, considerable
mental gymnastics are called for on the part of the judge and jury, who must regard
information that is true as untrue.
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