A local reporter learns that the owner of a care home has been cited for safety failures. She has a regulator's report, two former staff who will talk, and one detail she cannot confirm. Whether she can publish, and what it might cost her if she is wrong about that one detail, depends almost entirely on where she is standing.
In one country the owner would have to prove that she knew the story was false, or did not care. In another the owner need only show serious harm, and the reporter must prove it true. In a third, the owner can file a criminal complaint and the reporter can face prison. All three say they protect both expression and reputation. They weigh the two differently.
Not legal advice. This piece describes how several legal systems work, in simplified form. Laws differ by country and change, and the tools below are illustrations, not tests that tell anyone their rights. For a real question, ask a media lawyer where you are.
Defamation is harm to someone's reputation by a false statement of fact. Every legal system asks: when someone is hurt by something published about them, who has to prove what? There are four levers. Must the claimant prove the statement is false, or must the publisher prove it is true? Does it matter that the claimant is a public official? Does the publisher's state of mind matter: knew, was careless, or took care? And is the remedy money, or prison?
Opinion is treated differently from fact, and truth is a defence in most civil systems. After that the systems part. The tool below lets you set three facts about one invented story and see how a simplified version of each regime responds.
Stylised rules for teaching. Real cases turn on facts, forum and procedure. "Inter-American benchmark" is the Commission's 2000 declaration of principles, a standard rather than one country's law. India's column is simplified criminal law.
Without JavaScript: for a carelessly published false statement about an official, the US claim fails, England and Wales turns on the public-interest defence, the Inter-American benchmark allows no sanction, and India's criminal law can still apply.
In 1960 a full-page advertisement in The New York Times described the treatment of civil rights protesters in Alabama. It contained small errors, including how many times Martin Luther King Jr. had been arrested. L. B. Sullivan, a Montgomery city commissioner who was not even named, sued. An Alabama jury awarded him $500,000. In New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (376 U.S. 254, decided 9 March 1964) the Supreme Court unanimously threw the judgment out.
That is the actual malice rule. It is not about spite but about what the publisher knew. The Court's reasoning: open debate will include some mistakes, and punishing every one would make publishers fall silent about the powerful. Debate needs "breathing space". The rule was later extended to public figures (Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts, 1967), while for private people Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. (1974) lets states set a lower fault standard, such as negligence, but not impose liability without fault.
The rule has critics from several directions. Critics say it leaves people little recourse against spreading falsehoods, and Justice Clarence Thomas has written that the Court should reconsider it. Defenders reply that anything looser would be used by the powerful against reporters. The test below uses four invented stories. Decide whether a court could find actual malice.
All four stories are invented. Score is kept on the page only.
Without JavaScript: knowing the story is false is actual malice; an honest error is not; deliberately avoiding the one check that would settle it can be evidence of reckless disregard; a poor general reputation for checking is not the test.
The rule is not a licence to be wrong. In April 2023 Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems, which had sued over claims that its machines rigged the 2020 election. The judge had ruled in March that none of the statements about Dominion was true, and the remaining question for trial was actual malice. The case settled before a jury answered it.
England and Wales take a different road. The statement is treated as false unless the publisher proves it true, and the claimant's status does not change the burden. The Defamation Act 2013 (assent 25 April 2013, mostly in force 1 January 2014) added several changes. A statement is not defamatory unless it has caused or is likely to cause serious harm to reputation (section 1), and there is a defence for publication in the public interest if the publisher reasonably believed it to be so (section 4), replacing the older Reynolds defence. Courts also lost most power to hear claims against defendants outside the UK unless England and Wales is clearly the most appropriate place (section 9).
That last change answered "libel tourism": claimants with little link to England suing there because the law favoured them. The US Congress had passed the SPEECH Act in 2010 so that American courts would not enforce foreign libel judgments that fall short of US standards.
Across the continent, the European Convention on Human Rights protects expression in Article 10, and the European Court of Human Rights gives politicians less shelter than private people, since they accept wider criticism (Lingens v. Austria, 1986). Many European systems treat reputation as part of personal dignity, weighed beside speech rather than tolerated narrowly.
The sharpest modern problem is not losing but being sued. A SLAPP, a strategic lawsuit against public participation, is a claim brought mainly to drain a critic's money and nerve. The EU's anti-SLAPP directive (Directive (EU) 2024/1069, in force 6 May 2024) covers cross-border civil and commercial cases, and member states had to pass national laws by 7 May 2026. On 15 July 2026 the Commission opened infringement proceedings against 14 states for not having reported complete transposition. A non-binding Council of Europe recommendation (CM/Rec(2024)2) also covers criminal and administrative cases. In the United States, as of July 2026 forty states, the District of Columbia and Guam have anti-SLAPP statutes.
Invented numbers in thousands of any currency. Expected loss from fighting = defence cost × (1 − chance of winning × share recovered) + chance of losing × damages. A model of incentives, not of any country's costs rules.
Without JavaScript: with a 10% claim, defence costs of 150, damages of 50 and half of costs recovered, fighting is expected to cost about 87.5 against 20 to settle. If costs are fully recovered it drops to about 20.
That is why reforms target costs and early dismissal, not only the rule of liability.
In many countries defamation is also a crime, not only a civil wrong, and some keep older laws of desacato (contempt) that punish offending officials. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights set out a regional benchmark in its 2000 Declaration of Principles. Principle 11 says that officials are "subject to greater scrutiny by society" and that desacato laws "restrict freedom of expression". Principle 10 says reputation should be protected through civil sanctions only, where the person is an official, a public person or someone who chose to enter a public debate, and the claimant should show intent to harm, knowledge of falsity or gross negligence.
| Place | What happened |
|---|---|
| Argentina | The Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled for journalist Eduardo Kimel on 2 May 2008: his criminal conviction for criticising a judge's handling of a massacre inquiry violated his rights. Argentina's Law 26.551 (November 2009) removed prison for libel and slander on matters of public interest. |
| Other Latin America | Costa Rica removed desacato in 2002 and Peru in 2003. Brazil's Supreme Federal Tribunal scrapped the 1967 Press Law in May 2009, though the penal code still has criminal defamation. Bolivia's constitutional court struck down a defamation-of-officials article in 2012. Chile and Colombia still had criminal defamation in CPJ's 2016 survey. |
| Africa | In Konaté v. Burkina Faso (5 December 2014) the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights found that jailing a journalist for defamation violated freedom of expression. It divided 6 to 4 on the rest of the country's criminal defamation provisions: the ruling is against prison, not all criminal defamation. |
| India | The Supreme Court struck down section 66A of the Information Technology Act in Shreya Singhal (24 March 2015) as vague and over-broad, but upheld criminal defamation in Subramanian Swamy (13 May 2016). The offence now sits in section 356 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, which replaced the old penal code. |
| Philippines | Journalist Maria Ressa was convicted of cyber libel on 15 June 2020 under the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012. She shared the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize with Dmitry Muratov. |
The list does not show a free West and an unfree rest. The United States ranks 64th on RSF's 2026 index, and a law on the books may be used often or hardly at all.
A story can be true and still be challenged. A privacy claim is about disclosing private facts, not falsity. The European Court of Human Rights treats private life as a right balanced against speech case by case. In the EU, the General Data Protection Regulation (adopted 2016, applicable from 25 May 2018) lets member states give journalism exemptions from many data-protection rules (Article 85), and the EU's "right to be forgotten" was first spelled out by the Court of Justice in the Google Spain case in 2014.
The European Court of Human Rights has listed the factors it weighs, in Axel Springer AG v. Germany (2012): whether the story contributes to a debate of general interest, how well known the person is, their prior conduct, how the information was obtained, and the content and consequences of publication. Try them below. This is not a scoring system; a court weighs the factors together. The tally only shows which way each pulls.
Three invented stories. The five factors follow the Court's list; the tally is a teaching device, not a legal test.
Without JavaScript: a story about a councillor hiding contracts with her own company hits all five factors for publication; one using a neighbour's hospital record hits none.
Two more questions run through media law. The first is sources: without a promise of confidentiality, insiders will not talk. In Goodwin v. United Kingdom (27 March 1996) the European Court of Human Rights held that ordering a magazine journalist to name his source under the Contempt of Court Act 1981 breached Article 10, because protecting sources is "one of the basic conditions for press freedom" and an order needs an overriding public interest. The Inter-American declaration (Principle 8) gives every communicator that right too. The EU's European Media Freedom Act (in force 7 May 2024, most provisions applying from 8 August 2025) aims to protect sources, including against spyware.
The United States has no such constitutional rule. In Branzburg v. Hayes (1972) the Supreme Court held 5 to 4 that reporters have no First Amendment right to refuse to testify about confidential sources. Protection comes instead from statutes: forty states and the District of Columbia have shield laws, and 49 states and D.C. offer some form of protection. A federal PRESS Act passed the House unanimously in January 2024 but, to my knowledge, has not become law.
The second is prior restraint: a court order stopping a story before it runs. The US treats it as the worst kind of restriction. In 1971 the government tried to stop The New York Times and The Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers.
The Times began publishing on 13 June 1971. The government sought an injunction. What did the Supreme Court do?
Without JavaScript: New York Times Co. v. United States (30 June 1971) went 6 to 3 for the newspapers, 17 days after the first article, saying any prior restraint bears "a heavy presumption against its constitutional validity".
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) publishes a World Press Freedom Index each spring, scoring 180 countries from 0 to 100 on political, economic, legal, social and safety indicators. The 2026 edition (spring 2026) reported the lowest global average in 25 years, with more than half of countries in the "difficult" or "very serious" bands for the first time, and the legal indicator falling in over 60% of states. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) counts people: 129 journalists and media workers killed in 2025, the most it has recorded, with Israel responsible for about two thirds of them, and 330 jailed on 1 December 2025, down from a record 384 a year earlier, with China (50), Myanmar (30) and Israel (29) holding the most.
RSF scores for ten countries as reported for the 2026 edition; category bands are RSF's (good above 85, satisfactory 70 to 85, problematic 55 to 70, difficult 40 to 55, very serious below 40). CPJ counts are as published by CPJ in February 2026 (killed) and January 2026 (jailed). Indices disagree at the margins and do not measure the same thing.
Without JavaScript: RSF 2026 scores run from Norway 92.72 (1st) to Eritrea 10.24 (180th), with the United States at 62.61 (64th) and the United Kingdom at 79.45 (18th).
Read these with care. An index squeezes many judgements into one number. A count of killings records the worst events and says little about quieter pressure such as lawsuits and audits, or about self-censorship.
Media law answers who proves what when a story hurts someone, and the answers differ: the US asks officials to prove the publisher knew, England puts the burden on the publisher, much of the world still uses criminal law, and the SLAPP shows that costs can matter as much as rules. Sources and prior restraint get different protections too, and press-freedom data shows how far reality is from the text of a law.
Try this: take any news story you read this week and ask four questions: who could sue, where, what would they have to prove, and what has the writer done to be able to prove it?
Sources. The cases, statutes, directives and datasets named above: Sullivan (1964), Curtis, Gertz, Branzburg, New York Times v. United States (1971); the Defamation Act 2013; Goodwin, Lingens, Axel Springer (ECtHR); GDPR Article 85; Directive (EU) 2024/1069; Regulation (EU) 2024/1083; the IACHR Declaration of Principles (2000); Kimel; Konaté; Shreya Singhal; Subramanian Swamy; CPJ's 2016 survey of South American defamation laws; RSF's 2026 index; CPJ's 2025 killed and jailed counts. Details and links are in the fact-check log.