The Libel Law Scandal There is probably no practising barrister
with a wider experience of the working of the law of libel than Mr. Valentine Holmes, and when Mr. Holmes states, as he does in a com- munication to the Empire Press Union, that "the present law is an outrage," the case for an amendment of the law may well be considered unanswerable. Precisely what form the amend- ment should take is a matter for reasoned discussion, but the brief amending Bill framed for the Empire Press Union in consultation with Mr. Holmes provides as good a basis as could be desired for such discussion. No responsible journalist would desire that the law should give protection for a moment to any deliberate attack on any person's private character, but the present situation, in which some chance word or sentence from which a derogatory meaning could by calculated ingenuity be extracted may be pounced on and made the basis of a claim for damages, is, as Mr. Valentine Holmes says, nothing less than an outrage. The number of such cases which newspapers prefer to settle, at heavy aggregate cost, rather than embark on the risks and expense of litigation, is considerable. This is a matter in which the public interest is very definitely involved, for many papers today shrink, very intelligibly, from the full discharge of their duty of frank and fearless criticism in view of the inordinate damages that juries have awarded in some recent libel actions. A free Press is the best safeguard against dictator- ship, and the existing libel laws do not leave the Press free.
* * * *
Previous page
