I can FINALLY spill the beans

Hi Sparkies,

Yes, it’s me again! Yesterday I told you something big was coming… well, here it is! For the past year, between writing these newsletters, I’ve been working on a secret project for TBIJ. It’s called Silenced Stories, and today we went public, in the most prominent place I could find: Parliament. 

You know how much I care about journalism actually doing something – changing the world, righting wrongs, exposing injustices. Stories can give people power, and the tools to use it well. So you can imagine how frustrated I get when I hear about great stories – important stories – that never make it out into the world at all.

In the UK, where I live, our libel legislation – the laws that decide what the press, or indeed anyone, can say about a person or a company – are strict but generally fair. You can say something someone really won’t like, but be reasonably confident you’ll win any case they take against you, as long as it’s true, fair, an honest opinion, and you followed the rules of good reporting.

The trouble is the cost of any legal action. Being sued for libel can be ruinous. Even the threat of a lawsuit can be terrifying, and cost thousands in just initial legal advice. And law firms aren’t afraid to go hard in their threats. Some of my team have received legal letters that stretched to more than a dozen pages. My colleagues had the facts on their side, but their opponents had the money. 

My colleague Ed wrote an incredible piece last year about one of the big beasts of the libel business, Carter-Ruck. Imagine that force turned against small newsrooms, or even private citizens. 

It’s a massive flaw in the system. We went to the very top to solve it. 

Did you know that MPs are entirely protected from libel actions for what they say in the House of Commons?

In a former life, I worked in Parliament. So for the past year I’ve been scurrying around my old haunts and pulling together stories that deserved to be told but couldn’t be. I talked to MPs about the kind of cases we were seeing: genuine public interest stories that were shut down despite the obvious need to have the information out there. 

The result? Twenty three MPs signed an application for a backbench debate. This included MPs from six different parties and four select committee chairs. The backbench committee then discussed the application and decided to put it as their top priority – it was a relief to hear that media freedom matters to those at the top

I heard through the grapevine that it was a popular topic, and we just had to wait and see when the MPs fired the starting gun. Last week, I got the call: It’s on. We had just a week’s notice!

Earlier today, MPs stood up, one by one, and read out 11 stories. After a year of working on this project, I know most of them by heart, but it still felt different hearing them read out, public at last. 

Joe Powell, one of the Labour MPs who agreed to take part, told me: “The evidence presented in this debate makes it overwhelmingly clear how SLAPPs infiltrate so many areas of reporting. Lawyers have not only tried to stop – and succeeded in temporarily halting – coverage of numerous scandals, from Al Fayad to the Post Office. One wonders how many other significant scandals remain hidden due to these abusive legal threats. We urgently need legislation to protect those speaking out and to ensure our press can report without fear or favour.”

It’s too early to tell if this will change the system for good. (I’ve got some thoughts about what Sir Keir Starmer could do next though – and how he can follow up on promises he made earlier this year.) But even getting these stories out there, at last, is a step forward for press freedom and accountability. And the fact that these MPs took this issue so seriously suggests there might be a bit of momentum behind change.

TBIJ doesn’t have big funders for this kind of work; these are the kind of projects that come about from wild conversations in the office or, in this case, an idea my editor Eleanor had in her interview for the job! But if it excites you half as much as it excites me, I’d love it if you could think about supporting TBIJ financially by becoming one of our Insiders, and give us the freedom for more weird and wonderful ideas!

Right, now I’m actually signing off for the week. It’s been a big day!

Until next week,