Absolute and Qualified Privilege

Journalists – listen up! You need to know this.

There are two types of privilege, absolute privilege and qualified privilege.

Absolute privilege covers the content revealed in a court or tribunal as long as your report is FAF (Fast, Accurate and Fair). The “fast” aspect is often referred to as “contemporaneous” which in layman’s terms means you have to publish it as soon as is possible, this still covers  weekly and monthly publications. However this doesn’t cover defamatory matter that gets shouted out in court, it only covers the actual contents of the proceedings.

Qualified privilege covers any material that is considered important to the public interest. 

This covers:
1) Debates held in public (this includes parliamentary debates)
2) Court proceedings
3) Public meetings and press conferences held in the EU
4) Council meetings, including their committees and sub-committees in the UK
5) Official reports published by the government
6) Statements issued to the public by the government, councils, the police and other governmental agencies in the EU.

The information must be in the public interest, not merely of interest to the public.

There must not be any malice held by the publication in regards to the subject of the qualified content. So you can’t go off reporting things about people simply because you don’t like them.

Qualified Privilege allows you to publicise otherwise defamatory material, on the basis that it is true and it is in the public interest. For example the BBC published a story regarding Credit Suisse, headlining the story “Credit Suisse aided US tax evaders”. ““From at least 2001 to 2008 Credit Suisse employed banking procedures that facilitated tax evasion by US customers” the report by a US congressional committee said” the article then linked to the report. Because the BBC have outlined the basis of the report and then linked to the source they have been protected from defamation.