Banks v Cadwalladr

Meaning in a defamation claim is determined by the single natural and ordinary meaning conveyed to the hypothetical reasonable reader, assessed from the publication as a whole and its context and mode of publication. The court must avoid over-elaborate or overly literal analysis. Chase levels are useful tools, not rigid categories. For broadcasts, the court should consider how a reasonable viewer would receive the material as an uninterrupted communication. For social-media posts, the assessment should be impressionistic and account for the fleeting way users read them. Hyperlinks may form part of the context where the publication gives the reader reason to follow them, but external material is not automatically incorporated.

The claimant, Arron Banks, brought a defamation claim against Carole Cadwalladr concerning statements in a TED Talk, a filmed public speech, and two tweets. The trial concerned a preliminary issue as to the natural and ordinary or inferential meaning of the publications, including whether the second tweet conveyed fact or opinion and whether linked or externally accessible material formed part of its context.

The court considered the parties’ competing Chase-level meanings, the significance of the broadcasts’ format, the use of a hyperlink in the first tweet, and the relationship between the second tweet and material available through Twitter threads. The central issue was the single meaning which a hypothetical reasonable viewer or reader would take from each publication.

1. Applicable principles. The court adopted the approach summarised in Stocker v Stocker [2019] UKSC 17 and Koutsogiannis v The Random House Group Ltd [2019] EWHC 48 (QB). Meaning is governed by reasonableness, assessed from the publication as a whole, its context and its mode of publication. The court is not bound by the meanings advanced by the parties, subject to the pleaded-meaning limitation.
2. Chase levels. The classifications described in Chase v News Group Newspapers Ltd [2003] EMLR 11, and explained in Brown v Bower [2017] 4 WLR 197, are useful shorthand but are not confined categories. The court should not force a meaning into a prescribed level.
3. Format and context. A broadcast intended to be viewed and heard should be assessed as an uninterrupted communication, rather than by close textual analysis. Social-media publications require an impressionistic assessment because readers scroll quickly and absorb the essential message fleetingly, applying the guidance in Stocker v Stocker and Monroe v Hopkins [2017] EWHC 433 (QB). A hyperlink may form part of context where the publication gives the reader reason to follow it, as explained in Poulter v Times Newspapers Ltd [2018] EWHC 3900 (QB) and Falter v Altzmon [2018] EWHC 1728 QB.
4. Meanings. The TED Talk and first tweet conveyed that, on more than one occasion, Mr Banks told untruths about a secret relationship with the Russian Government concerning acceptance of foreign funding for electoral campaigns in breach of the law. The Convention Speech conveyed that Mr Banks had been offered money by the Russians and that there were substantial grounds to investigate whether he would accept it in breach of prohibitions on foreign electoral funding. The second tweet conveyed that there was a proper basis to investigate whether Mr Banks’s contact with Russia involved criminal conduct, by comparison with the Italian investigation into Lega’s contact with Russia.
5. The court rejected the contention that the Convention Speech conveyed the more extensive allegation that Mr Banks would assist Russian strategic objectives. It also rejected the contention that the second tweet conveyed that he had committed criminal offences or had covertly received Russian money. The BuzzFeed articles did not alter that conclusion, even assuming they formed part of the context.