A media lawyer who represented some of the most high-profile victims of tabloid wrongdoing said journalism standards are much higher today.
Speaking to Press Gazette’s Future of Media Explained podcast, Louis Charalambous said the idea that publishers can act with impunity is very far from the truth given the high cost today of defending legal claims.
In 2008 he won some £600,000 in damages for Robert Murat over groundless reports in a number of newspapers suggesting he was involved in the disappearance in of Madeleine McCann. And in 2011, Charalambous secured “substantial” libel damages from eight newspapers over stories that wrongly implicated retired schoolteacher Chris Jefferies in the murder of of Joanna Yeates.
In the case of Murat a reporter speculated that it was strange that he, a nearby resident, was hanging around the crime scene (he was in fact assisting the McCanns with translation services). Jefferies was apparently targeted largely because of his “posh voice and unusual hair”.
In more recent years Charalambous has acted for publishers, representing The Sun in its successful libel battle against Johnny Depp over an article that labelled him a “wife beater”.
He also acted for The Sun against a celebrity who wanted to keep their extramarital affair secret, in a case that effectively spelt the end of ‘kiss and tell’ style stories in the UK press following the celeb’s win at the Supreme Court in 2016.
Asked about current press standards, Charalambous (whose memoir Better Call Louis is out now in paperback) said: “Standards now are much better. Part of that is learning the lessons of cases like Murat and Jefferies, but publishers are also more risk averse nowadays.
“There aren’t the budgets to defend cases and that is very sad, especially if you are up against a well resourced opponent who may have a very bad case.”
Charalambous said the end of libel case success fees – abolished in 2019 – was a cause for concern when it came to access to justice for claimants.
“I do sometimes worry that another Robert Murat or another Christopher Jefferies will come along and just be too scared to take on multi libel claims because you are going up against several well resourced corporations”.
Before 2019, lawyers in defamation claims could charge the losing side a 100% uplift on their fees to incentivise them to take on more risky cases on a contingency basis.
But this system was seen as being abused and in 2011 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that a success fee charged by Schillings in a privacy case involving Naomi Campbell and the Mirror was a breach of Article 10 of the Convention which guarantees freedom of expression.
Schillings claimed more than £1m in costs from the Mirror (including success fee) for a privacy claim over Campbell’s alleged drug use which resulted in privacy damages of £3,500.
Recent legal cases such as Crispin Odey versus the Financial Times (which was dropped in April) and Noel Clarke versus The Guardian (which the actor lost after a trial last year) suggest that only the most well resourced news organisations can afford to contest investigative journalism in the courts. Both publishers spent millions defending their reporting.
Advice for publishers on how to avoid big legal bills
Asked for his advice on how smaller publishers can produce quality journalism without ending up in court, Charalambous said: “Make sure you can corroborate the story and the evidence is there. Focus on the Section 4 defence, public interest journalism. You’ve got to show that you properly put the story together and you can evidence that.
“When the complainant comes at you give them as much detail as you can, explain why it was written and you hope they will go away.”
He added: “It’s very hard. The idea that media can write what they like with impunity and get away with it is so far from the truth.”
Asked about the recent case of Prince Harry and others against Daily Mail publisher Associated Newspapers, he said this case held a lesson for all journalists on the importance of keeping their notebooks. Dozens of journalists appeared in court to explain how they obtained stories dating back 20 years or more.
Prince Harry has already won major privacy payouts from The Sun and The Mirror. The judgment on this latest case is due at some point in the summer.
Charalambous said: “My concern if I had been on the claimant side is I would be relying on people who did not have a great background in terms of their history and there had been payments paid to people for telling their stories which were then replicated in witness statements.
“The key individual decided to change sides and went so far as to say his signature had been forged and that he hadn’t done what he had initially told the claimant’s legal team that he had done.
“There was a compelling and detailed account from each of the journalists for each of their stories. It’s a real lesson for journalists that you keep your notebooks forever because you don’t know what’s going to come back to haunt you.
“When you’ve got all those elements together, what was left of the claimants’ case – from what I could see – was that it was built on inference. And once you have got a case that is built on inference, rather than hard evidence, it’s got be pretty good inference to succeed.”
Asked what he made of the payments to witnesses made by Prince Harry’s legal team, he said: “Whilst it’s not unlawful it’s unwise, because the judge has to look at the witness in the round. The judge has to factor all those things in.”
Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Carter Ruck acted for Naomi Campbell against the Mirror.
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