INVESTIGATIVE journalist Carole Cadwalladr has been ordered to pay a portion of Arron Banks’s court costs – said to be more than £1 million – in a libel trial against the businessman and prominent Brexit supporter.
Cadwalladr said she was “hugely disappointed” and described it as a “dark day for press freedom in the UK”.
Banks, a major donor to the Leave campaign in the run-up to the 2016 referendum, sued Cadwalladr for libel over a statement she made in a TED Talk and a tweet she later posted which included a link to the talk.
Banks argued the statements made by Cadwalladr were “false and defamatory” and sought damages and an injunction to restrain the continued publication of the remarks, which are still available to view online.
The Electoral Commission announced in April 2020 that a National Crime Agency investigation concluded there was no evidence to support the allegations against Banks or his companies.
Cadwalladr, a freelance journalist who writes for The Observer and has investigated the funding of the referendum campaigns and alleged misuse of data in relation to them, defended the claim at trial on the basis of public interest.
In a June 2022 ruling, Justice Steyn dismissed Banks’ claim, concluding that Cadwalladr held a “reasonable belief” that her comments were in the public interest up until the April 2020 statement, and he had not suffered serious harm to his reputation.
Banks challenged that ruling at the Court of Appeal, with his lawyers arguing the judge had incorrectly assessed the harm to his reputation and misinterpreted defamation law.
In a ruling in February, three senior judges said the appeal should be allowed in relation to the TED talk’s publication after April 29, 2020, but upheld her other conclusions.
The decision paves the way for Mr Banks to recover damages.
In a statement, Cadwalladr said: “At appeal, the court upheld Justice Steyn’s finding that my 2019 Ted Talk was both in the public interest and lawful.
“It ruled only that the public interest defence fell away after a change of circumstances a year later when the police concluded its investigation. It acknowledged that I did not control publication of Ted’s website.
“And even by its own estimate, 98% of the views were lawful and just 2% were not. Nevertheless, it has ordered me to pay 60% of Banks’s costs.
“I’m profoundly grateful to everyone who supported my crowdfunders in case of just this sort of eventuality. To my legal team who generously represented me on a conditional fee agreement. And to Mrs Justice Steyn for laying out in black and white the record of Arron Banks’s relationship with Russian government officials in the months before Brexit.
“The facts of this relationship have now been established by a High Court judge and are beyond dispute.”
Cadwalladr continued: “It is a dark day for press freedom in the UK. This decision has huge ramifications for any news organisation or journalist who believes that the overwhelming public interest of a story will enable them to speak truth to power.
“Many abuses of power already go untold in Britain because our defamation laws are among the most repressive in the world. This arbitrary and punitive ruling will mean there will be many many more which will never see the light of day.”
Fiona O’Brien, UK bureau director of Reporters Without Borders, agreed, saying: “These exorbitant costs – ordered despite the court’s recognition that Carole Cadwalladr’s work was at the time of publication covered by a public interest defence – send a chilling message to investigative journalists everywhere.
“This legal process was aimed at intimidating Cadwalladr and silencing her courageous journalism, and we stand in solidarity with her and all journalists subject to such exploitative litigation.”
