Cases

Flood v Times Newspapers Ltd

Held

(1) Those publications up to the point when the Defendant was informed that the IPCC had exonerated the Claimant were privileged. This was largely because those publications reported upon the police investigation, which concerned a matter of public interest, the behaviour of police officers.

(2) Those publications which continued after the publication of the IPCC report could not be the product of responsible jouranlism because the responsible journalist would have updated the website article in order to point out that the Claimant had been exonerated.

Given that it is now accepted that the right to reputation is an Article 8 right, the statement of Lord Nicholls in Reynolds that: "Any lingering doubts should be resolved in favour of publication" no longer applied. Instead the court would have to carry out the balancing exercise between Articles 8 and 10, giving neither precedence.

Also