Why it’s not Libellous to Call Tories Corrupt Now
When you train to be a journalist you have to rapidly learn a lot of law. You need to be able to cover everything from court cases to corporate wrongdoing to political proceedings without getting yourself and your publication sued for libel — or convicted of contempt of court and thrown in jail.
I did my postgraduate journalism programme in the pre-Trump days and just before the Tories slithered into power — initially in coalition with the Lib Dems. Back then there was an expectation that politicians would at least pretend to have integrity.
In those simpler times, when the law was the law and facts were valued, a young reporter calling a ‘top politician’ a liar — let alone a racist, a rapist, an inciter of societal conflict or corrupt — would have been in hot water.
Now I can confidently use words like liar, corrupt, crooked and even refer to sexual offences in relation to a troubling number of Tories (not to mention Donald Trump) and there’s nothing they can do about it. That’s because the best defence against a defamation accusation is that you are stating the truth.
For this article I’ll stick to the problem of corruption — which in itself could fill a book.
