In England and Wales, the “worst law” in the world in the field of media acts. Corruptions and oligarchs around the world use this law to try to “strangle” journalists investigating their criminal capital. This is stated in an article published in The Guardian.
According to the publication, the laws of England and Wales on diplomasia, inviolability of private life, privacy, copyright and data protection gained a bad reputation among public journalists around the world. It got to the point that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised to “change the rules of the game.”
The newspaper gives examples of how journalists suffered from these laws. One of them was faced with the costs of British legislation, when two reporters The Wall Street Journal were preparing to publish a book about the Malaysian Joe Law, looking for 4 billion dollars in the fraud case. Schillings, a London law firm specializing in the image, threatened to sue journalists, claiming that the book of the book was slanderous in nature. This prevented her from publishing, as both the authors and the organizers of the sale of the book could be made multimillion -dollar claims.
One of these reporters, Bradley Hope, who is currently responsible for the Project Brazen project, said that this episode has exposed to the restrictions of the British media law.
Journalists and organizations advocating freedom of speech, note that the British legal system in relation to the media is unilateral and can be used in order to force journalists to shut up. Now the question of changing these laws in connection with the military aggression of Russia against Ukraine is again on the agenda. Many members of the British parliament expressed deep concern that the Russian oligarchs, who are under sanctions, will use London lawyers to threaten and intimidate government journalists. In March, Minister of Justice Dominic Raab promised to change the media laws with the support of the Prime Minister.
Susan Kautrri, co-founder of the British Anti-Slapping Coalition, said the need to change the media laws arose in 2017 after the murder of the Maltese journalist Daphne Caruan Galicia. Then it was reported that although the journalist did not conduct any activities in the UK, 47 court lawsuits in this country were filed against her. In addition, several British law firms were threatened to sue her. The 33-year-old son of Daphne, the floor who went in the footsteps of his mother, is forced to repeat his articles repeatedly and soften some expressions in order to avoid accusations of insulting, which are made, even if journalists publish irrefutable facts. British investigators have to be more careful, using the phrase “probably” instead of “facts” when working with the documents received.