The energetic campaign to reform the British libel laws is making progress.

Yesterday the three largest UK political parties all indicated wilingness to make significant changes. And see Jack Straw in the Guardian:

… perhaps most importantly for the media – we’ll be looking at whether to introduce a statutory defence to protect publications that are in the public interest. A statutory public interest test which is clearly and simply expressed could help ensure that the work done by journalists, scientists and NGOs to investigate and inform the public can continue – while also preserving the right we all have to protect our reputations.

The Libel Reform Campaign wants More, in the form of:

a commitment from the Government to reform:

  • a clearer defence of “fair comment” in law;
  • removal of internet chat and interactive online services like blogs from liability,
  • exempting corporations from libel law unless they can prove malicious falsehood.

And that the ‘consideration’ to be given to a statutory public interest defence becomes a concrete commitment to a public interest defence. Campaigners have made it clear that this is an “essential requirement for reform that will protect scientists, NGOs and academics.”

Which is where I firmly disagree.

I am not interested in ‘protecting’ scientists, NGOs and academics. I am interested in a free speech for everyone, and not merely those in cutesy favoured categories.

As Climategate shows, many ‘NGOs’, ‘academics’ and ‘scientists’ need a lot more searching scrutiny from the public, not some sort of special protection.

And why should bloggers be exempt from liability? A popular blogger who libels someone (or who allows a commenter to do so) and whose odious words ‘go viral’ can do significant damage to someone’s reputation very fast.

There is an argument that in today’s Tower of Babble world such things just have to be accepted as the way it all works. Fine by me. But then that should apply to everyone equally.

At most we need some sort of reasonableness let-out to deal with commenters. If someone writes something defamatory on my garden wall, I reasonably can be expected to remove it promptly as soon as the fact that it is there is brought to my attention.

Likewise if a commenter on my website arguably libels someone and that is pointed out to me as the website host, I can either remove the offending text or choose to leave it up and face a possible lawsuit. What’s wrong with that?

Note! That is a separate point from what is or is not deemed by the law to be the sort of expression which is (a) untrue and (b) does someone reputational damage deserving compensation. 

Which in turn is a separate point from how far if at all any such alleged damage has to be proved in court, and where the burden and onus of proof lie as the action proceeds, and what level of compensation for any proven damage is appropriate.

All of which is a separate point from whether the courts’ costs regime encourages ‘libel tourism’, and whether there should be some way of seeing off obnoxious libel suits being brought in the UK just because something written about a foreigner on a foreign website has been read here and therefore ‘published’ here.

Some of this is complicated!

The core point is that we need to get away from the idea that there are those in ‘the media’ and everyone else, with those in the media needing and deserving some sort of special status and/or ‘protection’.

The media in their classic form (newspapers and YV) are declining fast. in reach and credibility. New forms of publication are sprouting everywhere.

For libel, one size fits all.