Arron Banks, TED and the public interest (Banks v Cadwalladr)

Article summary

TMT analysis: The claimant is the prominent businessman and Vote Leave campaigner Arron Banks. Mr Banks brought a defamation claim against the journalist Carole Cadwalladr. The claim related to a TED Talk at the TED 2019 conference in Canada in April 2019. A video recording was published on TED.com and a Tweet was published in June 2019 containing text and a hyperlink to the TED Talk recording. Publication of the TED Talk was found to be defamatory; however, Ms Cadwalladr successfully relied on the public interest defence pursuant to section 4 of the Defamation Act 2013 (DA 2013). The Tweet was found not to be defamatory. In April 2020, Mr Banks and the National Crime Agency (NCA) published a joint statement. The court found that Ms Cadwalladr could not rely on the public interest defence in respect of the publication complained of for the time period following publication of the joint statement. The court also found that Mr Banks could not satisfy...