Political blogger’s belief in the public interest of an article held to be ‘manifestly unreasonable’ (Riley v Sivier)

Table of contents

• What are the practical implications of this case?
• What was the background?
• What did the court decide?
• Serious harm
• Public interest defence
• Damages
• Case details

Article summary

TMT analysis: In this case, a TV presenter successfully sued in defamation on a blogpost accusing her of conducting a campaign of online abuse and harassment against a teenage girl and acting hypocritically by complaining about being the victim of online abuse. The blogger’s defences of truth and honest opinion had been struck out at the interlocutory stage, so only his public interest defence under section 4 of the Defamation Act 2013 (DA 2013) was considered at trial. This defence failed, with Mr Justice Steyn finding that the blogger’s journalistic process was seriously flawed, and that his allegations were ‘not even arguably true’. Written by Hope Williams, barrister at 5RB.