Gillick –v- British Broadcasting Corporation [1996] EMLR 267
Citation:Gillick –v- British Broadcasting Corporation [1996] EMLR 267
Rule of thumb:What is the test of defamation? It is a 7 part test – basically the full circumstances of how the information was found and what was said & implied have to be considered.
Judgment:
The Court in this case held that there was a 7 part test for considering whether someone had been defamed, "(1) The court should give to the material complained of the natural and ordinary meaning which it would have conveyed to the ordinary reasonable viewer watching the programme once. (2) The hypothetical reasonable reader (or viewer) is not naïve but he is not unduly suspicious. He can read between the lines. He can read in an implication more readily than a lawyer and may indulge in a certain amount of loose thinking. But he must be treated as being a man who is not avid for scandal and someone who does not, and should not, select one bad meaning where other non-defamatory meaning are available. (3) While limiting its attention to what the defendant has actually said or written the court should be cautious of an over-elaborate analysis of the material issue. (4) A television audience would not give the programme the analytical attention of a lawyer to the meaning of a document, an auditor to the interpretation of account, or an academic to the content of a learned article. (5) In deciding what impression the material complained of would have been likely to have on the hypothetical reasonable viewer the court are entitled (if not bound) to have regard to the impression it made on them. (6) The court should not be too literal in its approach. (7) A statement should be taken to be defamatory if it would tend to lower the plaintiff in the estimation of right-thinking members of society generally, or be likely to affect a person adversely in the estimation of reasonable people generally." Neill LJ at 272
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