The Press: Reversible Straitjacket

• Share

Britain's stern laws of libel and contempt, which keep much of Britain's news out of print, made news on their own account last week.

¶ For their coverage of Dr. John Bodkin Adams' trial on a charge of murder, five London newspapers—the Daily Mail, News Chronicle, Daily Telegraph, Evening Standard and Daily Mirror—had libel writs from Dr. Adams' lawyers.

¶ In a separate action resulting from the Adams case. Britain's biggest newsstand distributor, W. H. Smith & Son. announced that henceforth it will 1) screen all foreign newspapers and magazines for material that seems to violate the libel and contempt laws, and 2) handle no publications that do not have a British representative who can be held responsible in the event of court judgments. In addition, Smith's asked foreign publishers to indemnify them against fines and other expenses levied on them as a result of material in publications distributed by them.

Away As At Home. Smith's ultimatum was prompted by a contempt case in which it was fined $140 for distributing an issue of Newsweek containing a story that was held prejudicial to Dr. Adams' case. While punishing the distributor, the court did not punish Newsweek, ruled that Newsweek's London bureau chief, Eldon W. Griffiths, was not responsible.' since he testified that he had cabled nothing on the Adams trial and that the offending account had been written in New York from newspaper clippings.

Smith's decree was flatly rejected by the New York Times, which has only token circulation in Britain. Another U.S. newspaper distributed in Britain was expected to agree not to run any stories on British criminal cases without first clearing the copy with Smith's. Other U.S. publications were more likely to accept in Britain, as they do at home, responsibility for the accuracy and legality of what they print and, in effect, provide a person to be sued in British courts. This, plus a promise to indemnify distributors against damages, could leave the distributors free to distribute foreign publications without the "screening" threatened by Smith's. It was not the ideal way to avoid what many Britons were quick to call "censorship." 'There is need, said the New Statesman and Nation, for "a thorough overhaul of the law governing contempt of court, with its arbitrary powers . . . and its medieval refusal of all right of appeal." But, as the Manchester Guardian pointed out, "there is no clear way out of the thicket"'of libel and contempt strictures. Britain's libel laws are an uncodified mass of legal decisions from which lawyers have never culled a satisfactory definition of defamation. They make Britain's press the most suit-harried in the world.

In Britain, the courts still tend to view defamatory or contemptuous statements by newspapers more gravely than their American counterparts. British newspapers seldom win a libel suit; U.S. papers win at least as many as they lose. In the U.S., keyhole-peeping columnists are rarely sued for running exaggerated or even fabricated accounts of celebrities' loves and lapses. But privacy-proud Englishmen do not treat unfavorable stories as unworthy of notice—not to the extent of refraining from a promising libel suit.