Urgent reforms needed to protect journalists from vexatious legal threats: Index on Censorship

03 Jan 20 | Azerbaijan, Europe and Central Asia, Media Freedom, media freedom featured, News and features, Press Releases, Romania, United Kingdom

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The UK should make it harder for powerful individuals and companies to bring libel actions or use other vexatious legal threats designed to stifle investigative journalism, Index on Censorship said on Friday.

Launching a new project that aims to expose the extent to which those with wealth and influence use legal threats to shut down investigations into their practices, Index said that – despite recent changes to UK law – more needs to be done both in Britain and abroad to tackle spurious lawsuits.

“Defamation law was reformed in 2013 to make it harder for people who had little or no connection to the UK to bring lawsuits here,” said Index on Censorship chief executive Jodie Ginsberg. “However, we are still seeing people and organisations with almost no UK links bringing expensive and spurious defamation cases. In addition, increasingly people are turning to privacy and data protection laws in an attempt to prevent journalists reporting on corrupt, illegal or poor practice.”

Ginsberg said UK law firms were also among the most heavily involved in legal threats to journalists outside the UK. “This needs to stop,” she said.

Later this month, the UK courts will hear the case of Paul Radu, investigative journalist and founder of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). Radu, a Romanian citizen, is being sued by Azerbaijani MP Javanshir Feyziyev, who was named in an award-winning OCCRP report exposing money-laundering. Feyziyev is a sitting MP in Azerbaijan, though says he lives in London, and most of the readers of the stories about Azerbaijan are not from the UK.

Index on Censorship, which campaigns on freedom of expression issues globally and publishes Index on Censorship magazine, has become increasingly worried about the growing use of vexatious lawsuits since it first launched a project monitoring threats to media freedom in Europe in 2013. 

“News outlets find themselves receiving a letter threatening expensive proceedings unless online articles are rewritten or removed altogether, and demanding an agreement not to publish anything similar in the future. The letters often tell the recipient that they cannot even report the fact that they have received the letter,” said Ginsberg.

Such suits are a particular problem for independent media outlets and other small organisations. They are financially draining and can take years to process. Faced with the threat of a lengthy litigation battle and expensive legal fees, many who receive such threats are simply forced into silence.

Daphne Caruana Galizia, the Maltese investigative journalist who was assassinated in October 2017, had numerous lawsuits pending at the time of her murder, with some of the lawsuits brought by UK firms. 

Index will launch its research project into the use of vexatious legal threats against journalists later this month and aims to interview journalists and media organisations across Europe about the extent of these threats before a final report containing recommendations for action later in the year. 

For more information please contact: Jodie Ginsberg

[email protected]

About Index on Censorship

Index on Censorship is a London-based non-profit organisation that publishes work by censored writers and artists and campaigns against censorship worldwide. Since its founding in 1972, Index on Censorship has published some of the greatest names in literature in its award-winning quarterly magazine, including Samuel Beckett, Nadine Gordimer, Mario Vargas Llosa, Arthur Miller and Kurt Vonnegut. It also has published some of the world’s best campaigning writers from Vaclav Havel to Elif Shafak.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”3″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1578045297237-8e308956-998b-5″ taxonomies=”5692″][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Letter from America: Redskins owner's libel suit galvanises anti-SLAPP activists

09 Sep 11 | Uncategorized

Dan Snyder is perhaps the only man in Washington less popular than Congress. The long-running owner of the Washington Redskins NFL team, Snyder is best known for alienating fans, sparring with local media and pricing the team’s diehards out of their tickets. He’s also the most visible face of a routinely disappointing franchise that hasn’t won a Super Bowl, to the locals’ deep chagrin, in 20 years.

Dave McKenna, a writer for the Washington City Paper alternative weekly, handily chronicled many of these blemishes last November, at the tail end of another losing season, in an A-to-Z cover spread titled “The Cranky Redskins Fan’s Guide to Dan Snyder.”

Then, as if to further illustrate McKenna’s point, Snyder sued the paper for libel.

The lawsuit, first filed in February in New York State, immediately reeked of the worst kind of defamation litigation: that of an obscenely wealthy plaintiff looking to bankrupt his critics in court, regardless of the merit or eventual outcome of the case. In fact, Snyder’s lawyers communicated exactly this intention when they sent a letter on Redskins letterhead last fall to the investment group that owns the City Paper, concluding with this warning shot:

“Mr. Snyder has more than sufficient means to protect his reputation and defend himself and his wife against your paper’s concerted attempt at character assassination. We presume that defending such litigation would not be a rational strategy for an investment fund such as yours. Indeed, the cost of litigation would presumably quickly outstrip the asset value of the Washington City Paper.”

States across the US have been passing laws to prevent deep-pocketed, litigation-happy bullies from filing exactly these types of suits to intimidate critics from making protected speech. There’s even a name for the strategy: Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation. The statutes pre-empting them are commonly known as anti-SLAPP laws, and, in fact, the District of Columbia put one on the books this spring.

Among other things, it requires that plaintiffs demonstrate early in the legal process that they’re likely to prevail on the merits of a complaint (as opposed to bankrupting a defendant in discovery before the question of merit ever comes before a judge).

Now Snyder is challenging that law, too, broadening his sights from the City Paper to a legal protection that’s enjoyed by citizens throughout the District. And the city has had to intervene in the lawsuit to defend its law, with an amicus brief filed by the ACLU, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Society of Professional Journalists and a whole slew of other media organizations.

Back in April, Snyder moved the suit from New York to Washington. The City Paper then requested the suit be dismissed in June under the new anti-SLAPP law. Snyder’s lawyers, in response, are arguing that the anti-SLAPP law itself is unconstitutional (according to a convoluted legal arrangement that restricts the District of Columbia from governing itself in the same way other states and municipalities in the U.S. can).

The case has since evolved well beyond the small-bore debate over the tongue-in-cheek tone of McKenna’s original story and into a much larger one over the right of media outlets — and others — to legitimately criticise wealthy people without fear of legal harassment.

This much at least is clear: When the case finally reaches its conclusion, Snyder will have provided enough material to supplant the Cranky Redskin’s Guide with an entire book.