Reynolds Privilege

Reynolds privilege was a qualified privilege defence developed by the courts to protect responsible publication of untrue defamatory statements where the subject matter was of genuine public interest and the publisher had acted responsibly in gathering and checking the story. Parliament decided to put this on a statutory footing: the Explanatory Notes to the Defamation Act 2013 record that section 4 'creates a new defence to an action for defamation of publication on a matter of public interest', and that it 'is based on the existing common law defence established in Reynolds v Times Newspapers and is intended to reflect the principles established in that case and in subsequent case law', most recently Flood v Times Newspapers.

Critically, the old common law defence was not simply left to run alongside the new one — it was abolished. The Explanatory Notes confirm that 'subsection (6) abolishes the common law defence known as the Reynolds defence', explaining that 'the statutory defence is intended essentially to codify the common law defence', so that while courts must now apply the words of the statute rather than the common law test directly, 'the current case law would constitute a helpful (albeit not binding) guide to interpreting how the new statutory defence should be applied.'