Murtaza Ali Shah v Mohammad Imran & Ors

In determining meaning in a defamation claim, the court must identify the single natural and ordinary meaning conveyed to the hypothetical ordinary reasonable reader or viewer. The publication must be assessed as a whole, taking account of context and mode of publication, while avoiding lawyerly or over-literal analysis. A publisher’s intention and extrinsic evidence of what readers understood are irrelevant to meaning.

Political speech receives no special rules of interpretation, although its context may justify particular caution against over-analysis. A statement may combine fact and opinion. An allegation that a journalist knowingly published false or baseless material is ordinarily a statement of fact, while a characterisation of the journalist’s purpose or conduct may be opinion. A meaning is defamatory where it tends to lower the claimant in the estimation of right-thinking people and would have a substantially adverse effect on how people treat him.

The claimant, a journalist, sued three political activists over a petition, three Urdu-language videos and two tweets published online. He alleged that the publications accused him of knowingly publishing false or baseless news, misleading the public, corruption and conduct harmful to Pakistan.

The trial concerned three preliminary issues ordered by Master Eastman on 16 June 2022: the natural and ordinary meaning of each publication, whether each meaning was fact or opinion, and whether each meaning was defamatory at common law. The court also considered publications read together where the petition was linked to or displayed with a video.

1. Meaning. The court’s task was to determine the single natural and ordinary meaning of the words complained of to the hypothetical ordinary reasonable reader or viewer. The court adopted a practical approach based on reasonableness and the overall impression, avoiding over-elaborate or lawyerly analysis. Intention, extrinsic evidence and evidence of what actual readers understood were inadmissible. The publication had to be read as a whole, including context, mode of publication and any repetition of a third party’s allegation.
2. Political speech and translation. Political context did not create special rules of interpretation, but political discourse was often passionate and imprecise, making it especially important to avoid over-analysis. For the Urdu videos, the court considered the agreed transcripts and translations together with the visual presentation, tone and immediate publication context.
3. Fact and opinion. The court distinguished factual allegations from evaluative characterisations. Statements that the claimant knowingly reported false news, distorted facts or issued a report containing lies were statements of fact. Statements characterising his purpose, professional conduct or corruption were opinions where the ordinary reasonable reader would understand them as deductions from the claimant’s reporting or the speaker’s political standpoint.
4. Defamatory meaning. The common-law test required both the consensus requirement and the threshold of seriousness. Allegations that a professional journalist knowingly published false or baseless reports, repeatedly lied, or was corrupt met both requirements. The allegation that the claimant reported negative news about Pakistan, considered by itself, was not defamatory.
5. Disposition. The court determined the meanings of all six publications. The Petition, D1’s First Video, D1’s Second Video, both tweets and D3’s Video conveyed meanings which were defamatory at common law, save for the limited non-defamatory meaning identified in relation to negative reporting about Pakistan.