Two newspaper articles reported widespread rumours of brutality by the Reykjavik police. These rumours had some substantiation in fact, a policeman had been convicted recently. The purpose of the articles was to promote an investigation by an independent body.
Held: ‘freedom of expression constitutes one of the essential foundations of a democratic society’. Although the articles were framed in particularly strong terms, they bore on a matter of serious public concern. The factual elements in the relevant articles consisted essentially of references to ‘stories’ or ‘rumours’, emanating from persons other than the applicant, or ‘public opinion’ involving allegations of police brutality, and it was unreasonable to require the writer to prove that unspecified members of the Reykjavik police force had committed acts of serious assault resulting in disablement.
(1992) 14 EHRR 843, 13778/88, [1992] ECHR 51
Woorldlii, Bailii
European Convention on Human Rights 10
Human Rights
Cited by:
Cited – Reynolds v Times Newspapers Ltd and others HL 28-Oct-1999
Fair Coment on Political Activities
The defendant newspaper had published articles wrongly accusing the claimant, the former Prime Minister of Ireland of duplicity. The paper now appealed, saying that it should have had available to it a defence of qualified privilege because of the . .
Cited – George Galloway MP v Telegraph Group Ltd QBD 2-Dec-2004
The claimant MP alleged defamation in articles by the defendant newspaper. They claimed to have found papers in Iraqi government offices after the invasion of Iraq which implicated the claimant. The claimant said the allegations were grossly . .
Cited – Steel and Morris v United Kingdom ECHR 15-Feb-2005
The applicants had been sued in defamation by McDonalds. They had no resources, and English law precluded legal aid for such cases. The trial was the longest in English legal history. They complained that the non-availablility of legal aid infringed . .
Cited – MGN Limited v United Kingdom ECHR 18-Jan-2011
The applicant publisher said that the finding against it of breach of confidence and the system of success fees infringed it Article 10 rights to freedom of speech. It had published an article about a model’s attendance at Narcotics anonymous . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Updated: 24 August 2021; Ref: scu.165204
