EcoLogics

The following is an excerpt of a post published by George Monbiot about Sir David Eady, a judge of the Queen’s Bench Division, whom Monbiot describes as Britain’s legal censor. EcoLogics publishes it in solidarity with Monbiot and all those—the Murdochs, Rothmeres and other home-grown or imported oligarchs excepted—who are finding themselves on the receiving end of Britain’s extraordinarily repressive libel laws. To read the full blog, go to monbiot.com to ‘The Hanging Judge‘.

“During the libel case brought by Richard Desmond, pornographer and proprietor of Express newspapers, against the investigative author Tom Bower, who had claimed that Desmond acted on grudges, Eady refused to allow the court to hear evidence that he had done just this in another instance. In July, the appeal court found that Eady’s decision was “plainly wrong” and risked “a miscarriage of justice”(5). In 2004, during a case brought by a Saudi businessman, Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel, against the Wall Street Journal, Eady decided that the newspaper’s story that the Saudi central bank was monitoring the accounts of certain businesses in case they were being used (unwittingly or otherwise) to channel funds to terrorists was not responsible journalism(6). Among his justifications was the fact that the US government hadn’t published this information: Eady appeared to see the interests of the state and the interest of the public as the same thing(7).

The law lords decided that Eady was “hostile to the spirit” of the public interest defence and that he had “rigidly applied the old law” in a way that was “quite unrealistic … unnecessary and positively misleading”. In one amazing passage, Lord Hoffmann compared Eady’s approach to that of the Communist Party censors in the Soviet Union(8).

But perhaps the gravest judgements against the Honourable Mr Justice Eady are those made by legislators in the United States. Such is the reach and severity of his illiberal rulings that four states have so far passed what are, in effect, Eady laws(9), and Congress is currently considering a federal bill whose purpose is to defend US citizens from his judgements, and the English law he interprets. The Eady laws arise from his encouragement of libel tourism: allowing cases with only the most tenuous connection with this country to be heard in London, and using them to stamp on free speech all over the world.”

Here’s the funny thing about Eady: according to the Daily Telegraph,

Surprising as it may now seem, Mr Justice Eady was once a leading courtroom defender of red-top journalism, much in demand as a barrister who could be relied on to uphold the freedom of the tabloids to expose the private lives of public figures. It was to David Eady that the Sun newspaper turned when the Coronation Street actor Bill Roache sued over taunts that he was “boring”.

This is EcoLogics’ contribution to Monbiot’s denunciation: how extraordinary that, in a country that is almost second to none when it comes to Rottweiler journalism, with oligarchs such as Rupert Murdoch routinely employing their newspapers to attack uncooperative politicians, or simply to make money by publishing pedling celebrity tat, we have the most draconian press law in the so-called ‘free’ world.

It might be argued that this is precisely the reason why we have these laws. In fact, given the nature of British political culture, it is usually only the rich, and apparently especially the rich on the political right, that can use the law to silence newspapers, and defend their interests. This means that, far from being in the public interest, the law as it stands serves to undermine democracy. According to Monbiot, a key defender of the status quo has been Jack Straw, who as Justice Minister has blocked attempts to reform the libel laws.

The worst offender when it comes to rottweiler journalism is Italy—or rather, Berlusconi’s press. Have a look at this press item, published by Reuters, which reveals that Berlusconi is having one of his TV channels shadow and secretly film a judge who has ruled against the prime Minister in a bribery case. ‘Days after Judge Raimondo Mesiano ordered Berlusconi’s holding company to pay 750 million euros in damages to a rival, the media mogul’s Canale 5 channel aired a video of the judge taking a walk, smoking and getting a shave at the barber. Dubbing the judge’s behaviour “eccentric”, a narrator points to him smoking the “umpteenth” cigarette, calls his turquoise socks “strange” and says: “He’s impatient … he can only relax at the barber’s”.