The troubles of News Corp.’s empire continue, with the resignation of Rebekah Brooks and the planned appearances of Rupert and James Murdoch before Parliament. As the story plays out, a nagging question remains: How could anyone consider it acceptable journalistic practice to hack the voicemails of Gordon Brown, a murdered schoolgirl, and the victims of 9/11?
Britain’s press laws offer a clue. Drafted to protect well-known individuals from a muckraking press, Britain’s libel laws have troubled free-speech advocates in the United States, been called a “laughing stock” by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, and contributed to the U.K.’s standing as the “libel capital of the world.” The person crying “libel” needn’t work as hard to win a case in Britain, where the burden of proof lies with the defendant to establish that the statement in question is true, rather than on the libelled person to prove that a defamatory statement is false. British defendants also have more money on the line: barring unusual circumstances, they must pay some of their own legal costs if they win, and the majority of the claimants’ legal costs if they lose. (Claimants, meanwhile, can avail themselves of “no win, no fee” arrangements.) And the financial risk to defendants could increase as the trial proceeds, since British law can consider any evidence put forward to defend a defamatory statement as a factor aggravating the libel when calculating damages. Needless to say, a hacked phone conversation wouldn’t be admissible, and News Corp. has already paid substantial damages to hacking victims, and will probably pay more. And yet, if anything, the strictness of the libel laws seems only to have contributed to a culture that makes use of payments for information and routinely invades privacy.
Britain’s laws affect the content of so-called news stories as well as the means of attaining them. Consider the piece that first aroused suspicion that the royal family’s voicemails were being hacked. The subject: Prince William’s strained knee. These laws drive reporters to cover stories of little consequence, or people whose families are unlikely to be able to afford to sue, like Milly Dowler. Simon Jenkins, a columnist for the Guardian and London’s Evening Standard, has “no illusions about the press,” he wrote for the former. “I was trained as a reptile lurking in the gutter whose sole job was to ‘get the bloody story.’ ”
The laws that encourage such gutter lurking have been criticized in judgments by the European Court of Human Rights and shunned by the United States Congress, which unanimously enacted the Speech Act, rendering foreign libel judgements virtually unenforceable in the States. The British government unveiled proposed reforms in March, but the draft bill was widely criticized for being too limited in scope. Perhaps the News of the World scandal will provide sufficient impetus for Britain to move forward on the legislation. But probably not soon enough for whatever libel suit is in the queue.