Introduction

This chapter is concerned with how the statutory regulation of newspapers in England and Wales developed in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It deals with those laws which have had a particular bearing on the practice of journalism, namely those concerning defamation, privacy, breach of confidence, official secrecy and terrorism. These, of course, apply to all media, but this chapter is concerned solely with how these laws have been applied to newspapers. It will outline the contents of the relevant statutes, but given the key role played by judicial precedent, it will also explain how the laws have been developed by the courts in particular cases.

In 1936 the Law Lords declared that ‘free speech does not mean free speech; it means speech hedged in by all the laws against blasphemy, sedition and so forth. It means freedom governed by law’ (quoted in Robertson and Nicol 2008: 2). Blackstone's Statutes on Media Law (Caddell and Johnson 2013) lists fifty-eight statutes which have a significant bearing on media content, and this chapter will concentrate on those with the greatest impact on journalism, particularly in the press.

Freedom of expression is protected by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), incorporated into UK law by the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA), and this chapter will take pains to elucidate the ECHR's impact on cases involving press journalism. In particular, it is important to understand that, notwithstanding rhetorical invocations of England as the ‘home of free speech’, the statutory right to free expression as enshrined in Article 10 had never had a home in Britain until the Act's passing.

Article 10 of the ECHR states: ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.’