## Facts

- Albert Reynolds, former Taoiseach of Ireland, sued Times Newspapers Ltd, its editor, and a journalist over a British mainland Sunday newspaper article published in November 1994.
- The article reported on a Dublin political crisis that led to Reynolds’s resignation and implied he had deliberately misled the Dáil and cabinet colleagues by withholding material information.
- Reynolds alleged the article’s defamatory meaning was that he acted dishonestly in office.
- At trial, a jury rejected the defence of truth and found no malice; it awarded no damages, and the judge entered nominal damages of one penny.
- The trial judge held the defendants could not rely on common-law qualified privilege for the publication.
- The Court of Appeal set aside the result due to misdirection and ordered a new trial, also rejecting qualified privilege on the facts.
- The newspaper appealed to the House of Lords primarily on the qualified-privilege issue.

## Issues

1. Whether common law should recognize a generic subject-matter category of qualified privilege protecting all political information published without malice.
2. If not, how qualified privilege applies to media publication on matters of public interest, and what criteria govern that application.
3. Whether the challenged article satisfied the requirements for qualified privilege in light of its sourcing, verification, presentation, and treatment of Reynolds’s response.

## Decision

- The House of Lords dismissed the newspaper’s appeal and upheld the refusal of qualified privilege in this case.
- The Court rejected creation of a blanket qualified privilege for political discussion.
- The Court held that qualified privilege may protect public-interest reporting only after a contextual assessment of whether publication met standards of responsible journalism.
- Applying that approach, the Court concluded the publication was not privileged because the reporting and presentation did not meet the required standard, including inadequate inclusion of Reynolds’s explanation and concerns about verification and tone.

## Legal Principles

- Common-law qualified privilege remains grounded in a reciprocal duty/interest analysis: a duty to publish to recipients and a corresponding interest in receiving the information.
- No generic, subject-matter-based qualified privilege exists for all political information; political content does not automatically confer immunity.
- For media defendants, whether a public-interest publication is privileged depends on all the circumstances, assessed objectively, not merely the publisher’s good faith.
- Courts may consider non-exhaustive factors relevant to responsible journalism, including:
  - seriousness of the allegation and likely reputational harm;
  - public importance of the subject;
  - reliability of the source and steps taken to verify;
  - urgency;
  - whether the subject was given a fair opportunity to comment and whether their position was fairly conveyed;
  - tone and overall circumstances of publication.
- The factors are guidelines, not a mandatory checklist; weight varies by case.

## Conclusion

The House of Lords refused to create a blanket qualified privilege for political speech and instead confirmed a case-by-case public-interest qualified privilege for media publications conditioned on responsible journalism; the Sunday newspaper article at issue did not satisfy that standard and was not protected.


Reynolds v. Times Newspapers Ltd., [2001] 2 A.C. 127 (H.L. 1999)