The Supreme Court has refused a claimant’s attempt to test the UK’s qualified privilege defence in a libel trial, saying the application “does not raise an arguable point of law”.
Salman Iqbal, the founder and president of Pakistani broadcaster ARY Digital Network, had been attempting to sue another Pakistani network, Geo News, over its 2022 coverage of a political rally held in Pakistan during which speakers had attacked Iqbal and his business.
Under the Defamation Act 1996 fair and accurate public interest reports of public meetings or press conferences held anywhere in the world are protected by qualified privilege, provided they are produced without malice and corrections are published if sought.
A High Court judge decided in November 2023 that although the rally was a public meeting for the purposes of the Defamation Act, whether Geo News’ coverage fulfilled the malice and public interest tests could not be settled by summary judgment and would have to go to trial.
Geo News appealed this decision and in December last year the Court of Appeal agreed, ruling a trial was unnecessary and the judge should have entered summary judgment in favour of the defendant. Iqbal escalated the matter to the Supreme Court, who last month affirmed the Court of Appeal decision and ordered Iqbal to pay Geo News’ costs.
[Read more: Qualified privilege defence to be tested in UK libel battle between two Pakistani broadcasters]
What were the details of the case?
Geo News airs in the UK. In the broadcasts under dispute – comprising live coverage of the rally and eleven subsequent news bulletins discussing it – Pakistan Muslim League vice president Maryam Nawaz Sharif accused Iqbal of gold smuggling and claimed he had a “corrupt relationship” with former prime minister Imran Khan, whereby Iqbal received favours in return for favourable coverage on ARY Digital Network.
Judge Lewis, at the High Court, sided with Geo News in one sense, finding that the rally was a “genuine public meeting held in the run up to political elections and was very clearly about the perceived political failings of Imran Khan, discussing matters of some importance”.
However, he said points alleging malice (deliberate misreporting) within Iqbal’s case had been “good ones” and that it was unclear whether the rally had had “sufficient status” for coverage to have been in the public interest or for the public benefit in the UK.
Writing in December the Court of Appeal disagreed, however, saying “there was no basis for concluding that any of the broadcasts complained of was ‘not for the public benefit’…
“The judge rightly identified that many of the defendant’s criticisms of the claimant’s case of malice were valid; most of the propositions relied on amounted at best to allegations of careless or irresponsible journalism and were incapable of establishing a probability of malice.
“The decisive issue was whether the claimant had a real prospect of establishing that the defendant reported the allegations complained of in the knowledge that they were false, or with reckless indifference to their truth.
“In relation to the live broadcast he plainly had no such prospect as there was neither evidence nor any suggestion that the defendant knew in advance what the speaker was going to say.”
Furthermore they said neither the claimant nor Judge Lewis had identified “any factual proposition” that was likely to demonstrate that someone responsible for Geo News’ bulletins had “participated in the broadcast of the speaker’s allegations with knowledge of or reckless disregard for their falsity”.
In April Lords Hodge, Leggatt and Stephens at the Supreme Court refused Iqbal’s appeal against this decision “because the application does not raise an arguable point of law” and ordered Iqbal to pay costs to Geo News.
Read the Supreme Court judgment in full.
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