The latest decision in the Rush versus the Daily
Telegraph defamation saga is a warning to all publishers.
Post-publication fact-finding to support the truth of a publication
isn't going to cut it for a qualified privilege
defence.
Things aren't looking good for the Daily Telegraph in its
defence of Geoffrey Rush's defamation case. In a pre-trial
hearing (that we've already reported on in the
New Matilda), a judge struck out all of the Daily
Telegraph's truth defence and part of its qualified privilege
defence. Then the Daily Telegraph sought to reinstate the parts of
its qualified privilege defence that the judge struck out.
Without a truth defence, the Daily Telegraph's only defence
is qualified privilege, or hoping that Rush doesn't prove the
defamatory meaning of the articles. Qualified privilege doesn't
require a publisher to prove truth, so long as they can show that
they acted reasonably and the audience had an interest in receiving
the information
