Yesterday, EPP and PN MEP David Casa made a very valid point on the media reform that the government wants to bulldoze forward without any consultation.
David Casa said that EU anti-SLAPP law should be incorporated into local law to reflect local cases, but I would go even further. David Casa’s proposals also align with a proposal presented by the Nationalist Party in Parliament which invokes the principle of symmetry in litigation.
Current libel law is skewed in favour of the plaintiff and the law itself has been traditionally designed to protect religion, the Church, the elite and the powerful. Today, the law is mostly used by politicians and businessmen to silence journalists and critics.
The law is regularly abused because it has no symmetry. The plaintiff risks nothing by claiming damages against another individual and, for this reason, has no limits on the abusive use of the law. A plaintiff can open libel cases just to coerce and intimidate.
Therefore, the best way to avoid this abuse is to introduce symmetry: plaintiffs should risk losing the same amount of damages that would have been imposed on the journalist if their claim in court were vexatious. This would avoid abuse.
The Labour government is bulldozing with a law without any consultation. The government is also trying to introduce provisions in favour of privacy in its law.
Labour has no genuine interest in protecting the press: it has already manipulated the press and the information world extensively. Ultimately, SLAPP action still exists and it is already very crippling and damaging to our work. This situation will only get worse.
Website Editor
Historian and Publisher
Leave a Reply