Change in our libel laws is needed, but not because of one newspaper's payout, writes VINCENT BROWNE
THE MEDIA dismay over the €1.87 million damages award to Monica Leech against the Evening Heraldnewspaper and Independent News and Media is misplaced and offers no argument for a change in the libel laws, although a change is necessary for other reasons.
In the Monica Leech case the jury, clearly, believed there was a concerted campaign (10 articles) by the Evening Heraldto suggest that she was having an affair with Martin Cullen, and the obvious corollary of that was that this explained why she was afforded the extraordinary contract for PR services that Martin Cullen afforded her at public expense.
Her barrister, Declan Doyle, said in his closing speech to the jury: “She must be very good in the sack if the Minister is paying her €1,200 every day.”
Instead of acknowledging that the implication of the articles was just that and seeking to justify the claim, Independent News and Media sought to convince the jury that the articles bore no such implication. Curiously, although INM had indicated at the outset of the case they would be calling 21 witnesses in support of their contention, they called no witness at all.
Declan Doyle told in that closing speech to the jury how one of the articles dealt with Martin Cullen’s private life and the break-up of his marriage, juxtaposing that with a glamorous photograph of Monica Leech who, the article said, lived in a big house.
Another article, headed “The Minister, Monica and the mystery meeting”, was accompanied by a photomontage of Monica Leech and Martin Cullen with the Manhattan skyline in the background. That Manhattan story claimed Martin Cullen, Monica Leech and a few departmental officials went to a UN conference in New York but Martin Cullen and Monica Leech never attended the conference (this was untrue). Declan Doyle said: “This meant that she was off on a jolly with the Minister and they didn’t even go to the conference. Well, sure, they probably never got out of bed once they hit the Big Apple, the city that never sleeps.”
He speculated: “I was picturing the few pints that they [the Herald reporters, sub-editors, photographers and editors] probably went for that evening. This was after a two-week campaign of this stuff and now, well, ‘we’ve a cracker, we’ve a front page’ . . . I can imagine the few pints that night: the headline writer – I don’t know is he a sub-editor or something – the photographer maybe, the layout manager, a big man in the newspaper; the computer photo-doctoring man; the journalist, I suppose maybe even the editor of the newspaper. Well they must have had a right laugh that night:
‘That’s fantastic stuff, isn’t it?’
‘It’s your headline.’
‘Not at all, not at all, it’s your picture.’”
When Monica Leech issued proceedings against the Evening Herald, the newspaper, instead of withdrawing the insinuations, sought to find proof for them via discovery, proof they clearly did not have when they wrote and published the articles.
Incidentally, if it was the case the articles made none of the insinuations that Monica Leech said they did, why would the newspaper have been seeking proof of the same insinuations?
Having failed to find the necessary proof to stand up their articles they still refused to publish an apology or a retraction, instead hoping, according to Declan Doyle, that Monica Leech would drop the ball under cross-examination during the trial.
This was a reckless piece of journalism that had nothing at all to do with serving the interest of the public and everything to do with boosting the sales of the newspapers, and therefore the corporate profits of Independent News and Media, at the expense of the reputations of those they wrote about.
The suggestion that an award of the magnitude of almost €2 million, in this instance, amounts to an attack on the freedom of the press is nonsense, unless you believe that freedom of the press means that the huge corporate owners of the media have an entitlement to boost their already vast wealth by falsely smearing the reputations of ordinary citizens.
There should be a latitude for the media to report on matters that affect the public interest by seeking all sides of a story and taking all reasonable care in the researching and writing of the story.
In other words, a defence against libel charges of reasonable care on a matter affecting the public interest. This is the intended purpose of the proposed new law on libel.
Arguably, this is already part of Irish law, for the High Court found that such a defence was applicable here, under the Constitution, in a case taken against London barrister Louis Blom-Cooper by one of the Birmingham Six. Unfortunately, this case never got to the Supreme Court, but I think it is likely that the Supreme Court would uphold such a defence.