With the burden of proof on the journalist Walsh would have needed a direct confession (now available on Oprah Winfrey’s network) or covert filming to prove his story in court. So because the claim could not be backed up, and because the evidence offered implied guilt, the Sunday Times folded, paying £1m in damages and costs to Armstrong. The paper even had to state in court that it “never intended to accuse him of being guilty of taking any performance-enhancing drugs”.
Yet, of course, we know Walsh turned out to be right. It was just that the judges didn’t believe him, because the burden of proof had been raised so high. A similar point might have been made about Jimmy Savile too – the man we now believe to be a serial rapist and sexual abuser also used lawyers to stop journalists telling stories about him: according to his son, the late George Carman, the legendary silk, warned off the Sunday Mirror from publishing a story in 1994 about alleged abuse by Savile at Duncroft Approved School for troubled girls in Staines, Surrey. Any newspaper editor would have known that relying on 20-year-old evidence from once-vulnerable women could easily have been demolished in court; and once again the newspaper would have been shown to be “proven wrong” when, in fact, the women’s story and the journalist’s instincts were right.
Nor should one just blame the libel laws. Corporate pressures play their own part. There are now 22 Sun journalists who have been arrested as part of Operation Elveden, investigating corrupt payments to public officials. At the Sun from its inception, paying for news was the way the newsroom did business: the public were invited to sell stories by ringing the newsdesk. It is one thing to suborn a public official – but arguably quite another to agree a £300 tip fee to a soldier or prison officer.
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