Page 61 - Law and the Media

Law and the Media
Fair and accurate court reports
Section 15 of the Defamation Act 1996 confers a statutory privilege on a wide range of
reports. Under the previous law this statutory privilege was confined to publication in
newspapers or broadcasts, but the relevant provision, Section 3 of the Law of Libel
Amendment Act 1888, is repealed by the 1996 Act. The 1996 Act applies to any publication
– for example in a book, periodical, in an Internet message or even on a placard – and oral
statements made on radio or in conversation. Such reports do, of course, still need to be fair
and accurate reports of the proceedings, and the publisher should be free of malice.

The Defamation Act (1996) creates two categories of statutory protection. Statements that
come under Part I are privileged without explanation or contraction. Those under Part II will
not be entitled to the protection of the defence if the claimant shows that the defendant was
requested by him to publish in a suitable manner a reasonable letter or statement by way of
explanation or contradiction and the defendant refused or neglected to do so. Statutory
protection is lost under Section 15 if the publication is shown to be with malice.

The protection of qualified privilege may be lost if the publication is misleading in light of
subsequent developments, as this may not be in the public interest or may be evidence of
malice (Tsikata v Newspaper Publishing (1997)).

The reports, copies or extracts must be fair and accurate. Like absolute privilege, they can
be summaries and need not be verbatim (Tsikata v Newspaper Publishing (1997)). A few
slight inaccuracies will not be fatal (Kavanagh v NT News Services (1999)). However, unlike
absolute privilege there is no requirement that they be contemporaneous.

A press conference is a public meeting. To report the proceedings of such meeting is
protected by statutory qualified privilege (McCarten Turkington Breen v Times Newspapers
Ltd (2000)).

Qualified privilege attaches to defamatory documents prepared as part of a criminal
investigation and cannot be used to form the basis of a defamation action (Taylor v Director
of the Serious Fraud Squad (1999)).

The previous law (by reason of Section 7 of the Defamation Act 1952) restricted the statutory
privilege to reports published in newspapers or broadcasts by radio or television. There is no
such restriction in the Defamation Act 1996. The privilege applies to any publication,
including oral statements, books and the Internet.

1.3.4 Offer to make amends under Section 2 of the Defamation
Act 1996

Section 2 Defamation Act 1996 came into force on 28 February 2000. It provides an
alternative defence to a defendant who has made an innocent mistake and does not wish to
rely on a defence of justification, fair comment or qualified privilege.
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