On Monday 13 June 2022, the judgement in a defamation case that many had anxiously waited for – not least the individual defendant at the centre of the case – was finally handed down. No, not Depp v Heard, or even Vardy v Rooney. A case of far greater significance to the future of a free press and to public interest journalism in the UK – Arron Banks v Carole Cadwalladr, the Observer journalist.
Businessman Arron Banks, one of the self-styled ‘bad boys’ of Brexit, co-founder of Leave.EU and a major donor to the UK Independence Party, has a history of threatening legal action against individuals in the media. In 2015, he threatened to sue The Thick of It creator Armando Ianucci for what he claimed were defamatory references to his using a Belize-based company as a tax avoidance vehicle.
Significantly, he used the same approach in lodging his complaint against Cadwalladr, going for the individual rather than the media outlet. All media groups like the BBC or the Scott Trust, owners of the Observer, are insured against libel actions, and it’s more usual for complainants to bring proceedings against the publisher or broadcaster of an allegedly defamatory statement rather than the individual journalist. A claimant is much more likely to be paid large sums in damages if they win, and to have a public apology widely published if they sue an organisation. So why did Banks go for Cadwalladr herself?
A sentence in a TED talk
Banks chose to take out a case against Cadwalladr personally over a passing mention in a TED talk that she gave on social media and the threat to democracy in 2019. The offending sentence, “And I’m not even going to get into the lies that Arron Banks has told about his covert relationship with the Russian government”, was deemed by him to be defamatory.
Cadwalladr could have chosen at this point to issue a full apology for her comment and settle out of court. Faced with an individual of Banks’s reputation and his very deep pockets, most journalists would almost certainly have done so. Cadwalladr is made of sterner stuff – a multi-award winning journalist widely admired for her exposé of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data-sharing controversy and other investigative work, she chose to defend her case in court. A decision that released a torrent of violent and misogynistic abuse against her from right-wing trolls on social media. “A few hundred years ago I would have been burned at the stake”, she has commented of the attacks.
Banks lost – but at what cost?
If Cadwalladr had lost the case she would, as she herself has said, have been ruined, both financially and professionally. In fact the verdict handed down on the 13 June by the presiding judge, Mrs Justice Steyn rejected Banks’s case and media headlines celebrated Cadwalladr’s victory. Banks had lost. But had he? Cadwalladr has been subjected to three years of hell, poignantly described in extracts from a Twitter thread below.
The following is an extract from a longer thread posted by Cadwalladr on Twitter as she waited for the trial. We know now she won the case, but on reading her words, all of us who believe in democracy and individual journalistic freedoms must feel a little fearful for its future:
“You have not been sued for libel”
“You have not been sued for libel. So you’ll not understand how it’s not just designed to silence you. Although it does. But also to destroy you. Which it does too. It’s not a pissy business dispute. It’s a full-frontal multi-million quid existential assault. On who you are.
You have not been sued for libel. Because it is a rich man’s sport. That only rich men play. Because only millionaires get to have ‘reputations’ in the age of the internet. Sticks and stones, pal, you just have to suck it up.
You have not been sued for libel. So you don’t understand how it’s not just the trial or an act or an event, it’s a process that goes on over years. It’s a toxin that enters your central nervous system slowly and insidiously, until one day you can’t move your limbs.
You have not been sued for libel. So you won’t understand how it scares the very institutions that are meant to protect us. Even the liberal media organisations that published the goddamn words. Especially the liberal media organisations. Democracy dies in darkness?
You have not been sued for libel. You won’t know how every step of the litigation fuels more social media abuse. ‘Cos that’s the whole point of it. You won’t know how that shit sticks. Even with people you know. You won’t know how the rage and unfairness seeps into your bones.
You have not been sued for libel. I’m speaking for no-one other than myself here. Because that’s the first thing you’ll learn: that you have to speak for yourself. Because no-one else will. And over time, you’ll realise that there’s not even any point in that either.”
Democracy under threat
Will other journalists – seeing the toll that the whole experience has taken on their colleague – be deterred from investigating Banks’s affairs in future, or those of other controversial wealthy figures? Almost certainly. Which might have been the objective all along. And Cadwalladr’s ordeal is not yet over as Banks has chosen to appeal the verdict.
