Walliams case highlights using law to prevent publication

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London Correspondent Sean Whelan examines how lawyers acting for David Walliams were able to prevent publications and how proposed changes to legislation might hamper that in the future.

The great American press baron William Randolph Hearst is often credited with saying news was something somebody, somewhere did not want to see in print. Everything else, he said, was advertising.

David Walliams did not want to see reporting on his alleged encounters with 30 young women in print and on TV. The material met Hearst's definition of news.

But Mr Walliams, a phenomenally successful children's author, comedian and TV personality, had enough money to hire some top-end London lawyers to try and stop publication by the Guardian and ITN.

And those lawyers acting on instructions from David Walliams were able to prevent publication for six months.

The Walliams case, though lawyers say it's technically not a SLAPP (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation), has rekindled debate about using the law to stop the public finding things out.

Because it's not just journalists and media organisations that are subject to SLAPP actions. Whistleblowers, politicians, NGOs, campaign groups and regular individuals speaking out have all been subject to SLAPPs. And not just in Britain, but right across Europe.

Arriving the day after Russell Brand's sentencing for rape and sexual assault, and playing out in the public realm shaped by the Epstein files, Harvey Weinstein, the Me-Too movement, Donald Trump and E Jean Carroll, Stormy Daniels et al, we are probably living through a turning point in Western mores.

The courts are part of that change. So are the police. The Metropolitan Police said yesterday that they have opened an investigation into "allegations of serious sexual offences" against David Walliams.

The legal knots Mr Walliams tried to tie the Guardian and ITN up in will re-emerge in other forms, as high end law firms are hired to try novel ways to limit the public awareness of celebrities and businesses to the advertising and PR, not the newsworthy stuff, as per Hearst’s definition.

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