Becky Hasnip

Headlines will never be the same again. Dale Vince’s landmark victory over the @DailyMail. A landmark victory has been handed down by the the Court of Appeal with three of the country’s more senior judges (Wednesday 15 July) following a three-year legal battle between Green Entrepreneur Dale Vince and the Daily Mail. This new ruling will protect people from misleading media articles by establishing a new duty of fairness. Dale Vince has won his legal battle, against Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), publisher of the Daily Mail and Mail+, over a June 2023 article headlined "Labour repays £100,000 to 'sex harassment' donor". The article reported on the Labour Party returning donations from Davide Serra, who was the subject of an employment tribunal finding for sexual harassment. However, the article prominently featured not one but two pictures of Vince, one highlighted - holding a Just Stop Oil banner. Vince argued that this clearly led readers to believe he was the subject of the misconduct allegations. Lawyers acting for Mr Vince used GDPR legislation to argue that the Daily Mail had mistreated the Labour donor and green industrialist by unfairly processing his personal information. The Daily Mail now faces substantial costs and damages. Dale Vince OBE said: “It sounds grand, because it is - headlines won’t be the same again after this ruling. Not just headlines but articles too. Three years ago the Mail ran a highly misleading headline, using pictures of me in a headline not about me. It was a damaging reputational attack. The Daily Mail thought they could get away with it because they were protected by a libel law that was so old, it almost predated the internet.   They were wrong. The fallacy at the heart of libel law is the assumption that people read both headlines and articles in full. We all know this is not true; we all scan headlines and think we know what the story is. But that element of libel law has stood for over three decades, while the internet grew, social media came into the world, and our attention spans famously shrank. Libel Law in our country is not fit for purpose. It needs updating for the modern era. That’s not a fight I intend to pursue. I think I’ve done enough for now…:). This landmark ruling, based on legislation and assumptions of behaviour from this century will change media behaviour in Britain - starting now.  And it is likely to have the same effect in Europe, as GDPR legislation is European wide. Huge credit goes to my lawyers, Brett Wilson - for this. Not everybody has the will and the resources to fight powerful media groups like the Daily Mail. Many people facing similar injustices simply have to live with it, grin and bear it. Not anymore, the biggest outcome of this three year battle, for me, is that nobody now will face that same treatment and have no affordable recourse. From today newspaper headlines will never be the same again - because media outlets have a new duty of fairness and we the people have a new means to enforce it. Something so many of our media outlets fail to do voluntarily to their great shame - is now not a choice. The Daily Mail faces substantial costs and damages, but worse than that for them is this new duty of fairness - that appears to throw their current business model out of the window." Mic drop....:)