A fillip for investigative journalism

Editor's note: A verdict from Britain which can be useful for journalists in India too. Read the good news..
From Index on Censorship
In a landmark ruling likely to set a vital precedent in similar cases, Britain's highest court, the House of Lords, has ruled in favour of a public interest defence for defamations contained in important stories -and this defence can only be lost by editors who act irresponsibly.
The 11 October ruling follows an appeal by The Wall Street Journal Europe against a High Court judge's decision, supported by three Court of Appeal judges, that it should pay £40,000 damages to a billionaire Saudi car dealer, Mohammed Jameel.
The paper's 6 February 2002 front page story - "Saudi Officials Monitor Certain Bank Accounts" - said that bank accounts associated with a number of prominent Saudi citizens, including Jameel's family and its businesses, had been monitored by Saudi authorities at the request of US authorities. The aim of the monitoring was to ensure that no money was provided, intentionally or otherwise to support terrorists.
The Wall Street Journal Europe had published the Jameel name, amongst others, not to accuse the plaintiffs in this case of terrorist involvement, but to show that the Saudis were co-operating with the U.S. in the war on terror by agreeing to monitor the bank accounts of some of their most powerful and wealthy citizens.
The newspaper argued that it could not prove the truth of this story because its sources in Riyadh were afraid of reprisals from Saudi authorities if they testified, although their information had been confirmed in Washington through a confidential source within the US Treasury who also could not be identified.
The trial judge, Eady J, ruled that publication of the story was not in the public interest because it breached an agreement between the U.S. and Saudi government to keep the monitoring secret. He applied a long-standing English legal rule that the defamation could only be defended if there was an urgent moral duty to publish it.
The Law Lords, however, ruled that the media were not bound by government secrecy: "It is no part of the duty of the press to co-operate with any government, let alone foreign governments, whether friendly or not, in order to keep from the public information of public interest the disclosure of which cannot be said to be damaging to national interests."
They went on to rule that The Wall Street Journal Europe had been entitled to publish the story, despite its defamation of Jameel, to show the extent of Saudi co-operation on the war on terror.
The judges said that where the topic of a media investigation was of public importance, relevant allegations that could not subsequently be proved true should not attract libel damages if they had been published responsibly. The media was entitled to publish defamatory allegations as part of its duty of neutral reporting of news, or if, after investigation, they were believed to have substance and to raise matters of public interest.
The five Law Lords were unanimous in their ruling. The leading judgment was given by Lord Hoffman, supported by Lord Scott and Baroness Hale, and was intended to remove the risk that had hitherto attended newspaper investigation into matters of public concern " which could be construed as reflecting badly on public figures".