Take 10: 7 August 2026

Welcome back to RPC's Media and Communications law update where we recap on the key media judgments and developments over the last few months.

"Article 10.1: Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers."

Andrew Bridgen's libel claim against Matt Hancock dismissed

The Court of Appeal has clarified the scope of the honest opinion defence (found in s3 Defamation Act 2013) in Bridgen v Hancock [2026] EWCA Civ 991.  Overturning a decision of Collins Rice J (reported in a previous Take 10), Warby LJ confirmed that the third condition of the defence – whether an honest person could hold the opinion on the basis of any fact existing at the time of the statement – is an entirely objective one.  It is to be decided on the basis of argument and facts that are established or common knowledge and is not (as had been suggested by the decision below) a matter on which evidence of the opinions held or expressed by others is admissible.  Warby LJ found that Hancock's opinion - that what Bridgen had said about the Covid vaccine ("the worst crime against humanity since the holocaust") was antisemitic - was one that could be honestly held on the basis of uncontroversial facts relied on, and that no other conclusion could reasonably be reached at trial.  He also affirmed the very high threshold required to plead a case under s3(5) (that the defendant did not hold the opinion, i.e. the 'dishonesty disqualification') and found that Bridgen had not made out such a case. He therefore allowed the appeal, struck out the Reply and entered summary judgment for Hancock (who was represented by RPC).

MI5 and PSNI ordered to pay £10,000 each to ex BBC journalist

Further to our previous reporting, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) held that multiple public authorities unlawfully intercepted the communications data of ex BBC journalist Vincent Kearney between 2006 and 2018, breaching Articles 8 and 10 ECHR and interfering with principles of journalistic source protection. Although the MI5, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and the Metropolitan Police (MPS) accepted that they had unlawfully accessed his data, the IPT held that the access was also substantively disproportionate as they had failed to comply with the correct legal procedures for obtaining such data; did not adequately consider alternatives; and failed to demonstrate compelling public interest.  MI5 and the PSNI were ordered to pay damages of £10,000 each to Mr Kearney based on the repeated and long-term nature of the interferences. 

Ofcom reviews its operating model

Newly appointed Ofcom chair Ian Cheshire has launched a review of the regulator's organisational structure and operating model, stating that it would need to be nimbler in order to properly regulate quickly developing technologies on online platforms. Since its remit expanded to regulate online service providers alongside more traditional media in 2023, with the introduction of the Online Safety Act 2023, the regulator says its workload has nearly doubled. Cheshire has said that more powers and greater resources may be required in order to be effective in responding to technological changes (such as AI chat bots) quickly and effectively. The review is due to conclude in autumn. 

High Court discharges reporting restrictions in blackmail injunction case

On 29 July 2026 Mr Justice Fordham handed down judgment in HSX v Persons Unknown and Others [2026] EWHC 1985 and made an Order for the continuation of an injunction prohibiting the Defendants from disclosing intimate messages and photos of the Claimant, a New York businessman. The Defendants had threatened to release these messages unless the Claimant provided substantial sums in return. In continuing the injunction, Fordham J observed that "a blackmailer cannot claim any significant Article 10 rights " [10].  He considered whether a point may be taken about extra-territoriality, on the basis that the Claimant's Article 8 right was being enjoyed only in the USA.  However, given the strong evidence that the Defendants are based in the UK, that the threats were being made from the UK and the Claimant was being demanded to transfer money to UK bank accounts, the Court was satisfied that the "misuse" of the private information is within the jurisdiction [11].  Various orders related to anonymity and access to documents were also continued, whilst a reporting restriction which had been made in the first emergency injunctive Order was discharged in furtherance of open justice [2].

High Court awards remedies in uncontested defamation proceedings

On 29 July 2026, Mr Justice Fordham handed down judgment awarding remedies in Mktrchyan v 2TROM Media Group Ltd.  The Claimant had obtained default judgment in defamation proceedings in respect of an article published by The London Post (the "Article").  The Court was therefore assessing remedies in uncontested proceedings. The Claimant was awarded various remedies including general and aggravated damages in the sum of £105,000 and the entirety of his costs claim (awarded on the indemnity basis). In its assessment of damages, the Court considered that the Article made grave allegations of corruption going "to the heart of [the Claimant's] professional life" and was "the effective cause" of the Claimant's debanking [18].  Aggravated damages were deemed appropriate in light of (amongst other things) the Defendants' failure to engage with the Claimant's post-publication requests to remove the Article and in correspondence throughout the proceedings, which was also the key factor in the Court granting the entirety of the Claimant's costs owing to the "very special circumstances of the case" [21].  

Tooley v Times Media – McKennitt abuse considered

Times Media, publisher of The Times newspaper, has partially succeeded in a strike out application relating to a claim brought by the subject of an article who is suing in defamation, misuse of private information, breach of confidence, and malicious falsehood. The claimant, acting in person, previously had an application for an interim injunction to restrain continued publication of the article refused. One basis on which Times Media sought to strike out the MPI claim was on the basis that an earlier judgment in the proceedings ruled that the MPI claim was being advanced to avoid the rules of defamation law (i.e. the Claimant had pleaded MPI for the purpose of obtaining an injunction), in contravention of McKennitt v Ash [2006] EWCA Civ 1714 at [79]. However, the court held that the earlier judgment considered the claimant's motive only for the purposes of the injunction, and that the claimant had brought viable defamation and MPI claims side by side rather than as alternatives to each other, so no rule of defamation law was being subverted. In addition, despite the Claimant having already filed three versions of a draft Amended Particulars of Claim before the hearing, the judge provided the Claimant with a final opportunity to amend with a view to compliance with PD 53B in respect of the breach of confidence claim, failing which Times Media could re-apply to strike it out on the papers. The remaining claims in malicious falsehood and in defamation (save for one part) were struck out. 

OSA OK?

On 27 July 2026, the Communications and Digital Committee launched an inquiry into the implementation, enforcement and impact of the Online Safety Act 2023. The inquiry is focused on concerns that the statutory regime is unsuitable and that Ofcom has been ineffective in meeting its goal of preventing illegal content and protecting children online through attempts to hold online platforms to account or deal with novel threats posed by emerging technologies. The OSA's primary aim is to protect children from harm online, and the government's proposed ban of certain social media platforms for under 16s will perhaps make much of the OSA otiose in any event. Nonetheless, the public are invited to give written submissions by 7 September 2026 on (1) the impact of the OSA, including whether children have been made safer online and whether users are less exposed to illegal content; (2) Ofcom's implementation and enforcement of the OSA; and (3) the adequacy of the legislative framework. Read more on recent OSA updates in our previous Take 10.

Lodhia v Twelve Trees Management Company & Ors

On 24 July 2026, Mr Justice Linden handed down his second judgment on consequential matters arising from the discontinuance of a claim in libel and malicious falsehood in April 2026. We previously reported his first judgment here. The Court ordered that the Defendants' costs be determined on the indemnity basis. The Claimant's conduct was "out of the norm" to a significant degree and included the aggressive pursuit of allegations of malice which were abandoned without explanation, the unreasonable threat and pursuit of regulatory complaints and personal claims against the Defendant's legal representatives, the reliance on false evidence and fabricated documents, and the pursuit of eight applications which were found to be totally without merit. In accordance with its powers under CPR r.3.11 and Practice Direction 3C, the Court made a 3-year General Civil Restraint Order (GCRO) taking into account the 'totally without merit' claims, the persistent nature of the Claimant's conduct and the fact the Claimant had been subject to a separate GCRO following different proceedings between 2002 and 2024. The Claimant was referred to the Attorney General's Office to consider whether to pursue him for contempt of court and/or report him to the police.

Garrett v Schestowitz and Schestowitz (No.2) – contempt for breach of an injunction

On 29 July 2026, Mr Justice Fordham handed down judgment in an application for committal for contempt in Garrett v Schestowitz and anor (No. 2) [2026] EWHC 1948. The application followed the trial judgment published in November last year where the Claimant won a libel claim against the Defendants concerning 24 articles which contained serious allegations about him. Our previous reporting on the trial judgment can be found here. Fordham J found that 48 of the 177 alleged breaches of an injunction requiring the Defendants to remove the allegations on their website and preventing them from publishing further defamatory material were a contempt of court. In breach of the injunction, the First Defendant had published four articles online between January and February 2026 which bore a 'similar' defamatory meaning to at least one of the judicially-determined meanings, while the Defendants had failed to take down online mirror-image identical copies of each of the defamatory articles that remained accessible through an alternative internet protocol. The remaining alleged breaches, for failing to remove webpages which contained the same or similar meaning as the defamatory articles but had not been claimed over, were held to be unenforceable as a basis for a contempt finding; the absence of a specified deadline for compliance was fatal to that aspect of the Claimant's application.

Spurned nephew jailed over contempt of court

In an ex-tempore judgment of 27 July, Mr Justice Griffiths sentenced Dr Sean Stimson, a litigant in a will dispute, to 28 days' imprisonment after determining in an earlier judgment that the Defendant was in contempt of court for breaching an injunction prohibiting him from sending abusive, threatening or otherwise harassing communications to the Claimants (who operate a law firm) or its staff.  The injunction was previously agreed as part of a settlement in 2024 after the Claimants brought harassment proceedings over various threats and "obscene and criminal" phone calls made by the Defendant to its staff. In rejecting an abuse of process argument made by the Defendant, Griffiths J clarified when making his finding of contempt that an application to commit for contempt of court (which are civil proceedings, although the criminal burden and standard of proof applies) does not have to be advanced in the same way a criminal prosecutor conducts criminal proceedings. In particular, a civil applicant does not need to comply with the Code for Crown Prosecutors which would otherwise require them, for example, to pursue all "reasonable lines of enquiry" before making their application [86-89].

Quote of the fortnight

"The Holocaust was a deliberate genocidal campaign to eradicate an entire people for motives of ethnic or religious prejudice. The Covid vaccine rollout was not. On the undisputed facts it was, at least in part, a benevolent public health programme with the aim of saving lives. The Bridgen Tweet did not suggest that the vaccine rollout was worse than the Holocaust, but it did expressly suggest some form of comparability. It suggested that the vaccine programme was a crime against humanity worse than any other in the intervening 75 years. In submissions, Mr Eardley [Matt Hancock's counsel] identified a possible thought process. He suggested that an honest person could think that by comparing the two events – mentioning them in the same breath - Mr Bridgen was minimising or trivialising the Holocaust, and that this was not only deeply offensive to Jewish people but also antisemitic. I do not accept that reasoning of that kind can be dismissed as impossible for any honest person. Nor do I accept that a trial is required to determine whether this is a line of thinking in which an honest person could engage." – Lord Justice Warby in Bridgen v Hancock [2026] EWCA Civ 991 at [61]

Brought to you by RPC's Media team.  Take 10 will be taking a short break over the summer and will resume early in the Michaelmas Term.