Test for press freedom as verdict due in Arron Banks libel case against Carole Cadwalladr

The highly anticipated judgment in the libel action brought by multimillionaire Brexit backer Arron Banks against the Observer and Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr will be handed down this week. The landmark verdict will potentially have huge ramifications for press freedom and investigative reporting.

Mrs Justice Steyn will deliver her judgment by email on Monday morning. The decision will be the culmination of an often rancorous three-year legal battle and could send a chilling effect throughout British journalism.

Banks, who donated a record £8m to the pro-Brexit Leave.EU campaign group, is suing Cadwalladr for defamation over two instances – one in a Ted video talk and another in a tweet – in which she said the businessman was lying about his relationship with the Russian state.

After four days of hearings in January, Cadwalladr’s lawyer, Gavin Millar QC, argued in closing written submissions that the journalist’s reporting on Banks and the Russian state was of the greatest public interest imaginable.

Millar told the high court in London that Banks and his close associate Andy Wigmore, Leave.EU’s director of communications, had given “contradictory and misleading accounts about his [Banks’s] meetings with Russian officials and the extent of his relationship with the Russian state” as well as about who had orchestrated the contact with the Russian government and the reason for it.

Cadwalladr’s defence rests on the longstanding journalistic principle of public interest: specifically whether it was “reasonable” for her to believe that publishing such statements was acting in that interest.

Proponents of a free press cite public interest as fundamental to a functioning democracy, saying it routinely forms the basis for investigative journalism.

A number of press freedom groups have backed Cadwalladr, raising their concerns over the wider implications of a wealthy and prominent individual choosing to sue an individual freelance journalist, instead of focusing on the wider reporting of the Observer and Guardian or the Ted organisation, which provided the platform for her April 2019 talk and on whose website it can still be viewed.

After Banks launched his libel action, several organisations called on the UK government to ensure that so-called “Slapps” – strategic lawsuits against public participation – were not used to discourage public-interest reporting.

Rebecca Vincent, director of operations and campaigns for Reporters Without Borders, said Banks’s libel action appeared “intended to discredit and isolate Cadwalladr, and send a clear warning to other journalists of what will happen if they pursue certain investigations.

“London courts must not be used as a playing field for the wealthy to silence public-interest reporting. Journalists must be free to do their jobs without fear of lengthy and costly litigation for covering certain topics or individuals.”

Banks denied he was pursuing a Slapp suit, telling the court: “I was not sure how else I was expected to correct the record and I certainly cannot do so if she insists on being able to repeat false claims.”

Cadwalladr, who has won numerous awards for her reporting on a variety of controversial topics, has been the target of sustained online trolling, abuse and harassment, much of it seemingly motivated by misogyny.

Paul Webster, editor of the Observer, which published much of Cadwalladr’s journalism, including the Cambridge Analytica scandal, said: “Carole’s courageous reporting has given the public deep insight into the covert ways powerful people, organisations and social media companies have attempted to influence our democracies.”

Webster described the trolling of Cadwalladr, an Orwell prize winner and Pulitzer prize finalist, as “disgraceful” and lamented that she had endured years of online harassment and misogyny as a result of her agenda-setting work.

“Carole has been the victim of sustained and disgraceful harassment, misogyny and personal threats on social media, much of which appears to relate to her reporting on these topics,” he said.

In his closing written submissions Millar said that Cadwalladr’s reporting about the weaknesses in rules controlling political campaign expenditure, and accountability in respect of social media targeting and advertising, had raised issues that “threaten the integrity of our democratic processes”.

He said the Ted talk at the centre of the libel action, titled Facebook’s Role in Brexit – and the Threat to Democracy, addressed topics “of the greatest possible importance to the organisation of the political life of the country”.

In the widely viewed talk, Cadwalladr discussed the 2016 Brexit referendum and briefly mentioned that Nigel Farage’s Leave.EU campaign, largely funded by Banks’s donation, the largest in British political history, had been found by the Electoral Commission to have broken electoral and data laws.

Cadwalladr also makes a similarly brief reference to the commission’s investigation of the source of Banks’s funding, and a passing remark about the financier “telling lies” about what she described as “his covert relationship with the Russian government”.

A couple of months later – after Banks had complained about the Ted talk – the journalist tweeted a further reference to Banks “lying” about his contact with the Russian government.

Banks, who was cleared of criminality in relation to the donation following an investigation by the National Crime Agency, has consistently and strongly denied any illegal Russian links, though he admits meeting Russian embassy officials on a number of occasions.

At a preliminary hearing in November 2019 on the meaning of Cadwalladr’s words in the talk and tweet, Mr Justice Saini concluded that an average listener would have understood that: “On more than one occasion Banks told untruths about a secret relationship he had with the Russian government in relation to acceptance of foreign funding of electoral campaigns in breach of the law on such funding.”

Banks, in his legal claim, says this meaning is defamatory. Cadwalladr has said this is not the meaning she intended and that she had always been careful to say there was no evidence to suggest Banks had accepted any money.

Initially Cadwalladr defended the claim on the basis of truth, limitation and the public interest. The defences of truth and limitation were withdrawn after Saini set out the meanings which he had found the Ted talk and the tweet to bear.

Webster added: “We will continue to support the rights of journalists like Carole to report independently and in the public interest.”