Case Facts
The plaintiffs, Anne Charleston and Ian Smith, were well-known actors who played Harold and Madge Bishop — a respectable married couple — in the popular Australian television serial Neighbours, which was broadcast to an English audience of millions. The defendants were the publishers and editor of the News of the World, a Sunday newspaper with a readership of more than ten million.
In its edition of 15 March 1992, the newspaper published an article accompanied by two large photographs in which the heads of the plaintiffs had been superimposed on the bodies of persons depicted engaging in sexual intercourse or sodomy, along with a further photograph showing the female plaintiff's face superimposed on the body of a woman wearing a revealing leather outfit. The photographs had been produced by the makers of a pornographic computer game without the knowledge or consent of the plaintiffs. A prominent banner headline read: "Strewth! What's Harold up to with our Madge?" with a second prominent headline beneath the photographs reading: "Porn Shocker for Neighbours Stars." The captions beneath the photographs included: "Soap Studs: Harold and Madge's faces are added to porn actors' bodies in a scene from the game" and "Ramsay Rave: 'Madge' in kinky leather gear." A further caption beside smaller inset photographs of the plaintiffs themselves read: "Victims: Ian and Anne."
Crucially, the text of the article made clear throughout that the plaintiffs' faces had been superimposed on the bodies of others without their knowledge or consent, and expressly described the plaintiffs as victims. It was conceded on behalf of the plaintiffs that no reader who had read beyond the first paragraph of the article could possibly have drawn the inference that the plaintiffs had willingly participated in producing the photographs.
A preliminary issue was tried by Blofeld J on 22 January 1993 as to whether the publication was capable of bearing any of the defamatory meanings pleaded. Blofeld J determined the issue in favour of the defendants and dismissed the action. The Court of Appeal unanimously dismissed the plaintiffs' appeal on 17 December 1993. The plaintiffs brought a further appeal to the House of Lords.
Held
The House of Lords unanimously dismissed the appeal. All five Law Lords agreed that a prominent headline, or a headline and photograph, cannot found a claim in libel in isolation from the related text of an accompanying article which, when considered as a whole, is not defamatory. The publication, viewed in its entirety, was incapable of bearing the defamatory meanings pleaded by the plaintiffs.
Ratio Decidendi
The ratio rests on two closely connected limbs, both rooted in the established principles of defamation law applied with reference to Chalmers v Payne (1835) and the dicta of Diplock LJ in Slim v Daily Telegraph Ltd [1968].
First, it is contrary to the law of libel for a plaintiff to sever and rely upon an isolated defamatory passage within a publication if other parts of that same publication negate the defamatory effect of the passage in question. A claimant cannot cherry-pick a headline or photograph standing alone and build a libel claim upon it whilst ignoring the remainder of the article that clearly contradicts any defamatory imputation.
Second, where no legal innuendo is alleged, a single natural and ordinary meaning must be ascribed to an allegedly defamatory publication. That meaning is determined by reference to the words taken as a whole, as they would be understood by the ordinary, reasonable, fair-minded reader. A plaintiff cannot rely upon a defamatory meaning that would be conveyed only to the limited sub-class of readers who read no further than the headline or opening elements of a publication. The reasonable reader is taken to have read the entire article, and the meaning of the publication must be assessed accordingly.
These two limbs together establish what is sometimes referred to as the "holistic" or "whole publication" principle in defamation: the natural and ordinary meaning of any publication must be derived from the publication as a whole, not from any isolated fragment of it.
Obiter Dicta
In delivering the leading opinion, the presiding Law Lord expressed considerable sympathy for the plaintiffs and acknowledged that many people would think the law ought to afford some redress against the publication of such degrading fabricated photographs, irrespective of what the accompanying text said. It was noted, however, that the House was not concerned with questions of journalistic ethics or the development of any novel tort, but solely with whether the plaintiffs' claim in defamation could succeed on the established principles of the law of libel. The suggestion that the law should be developed to provide a remedy in such circumstances was therefore left expressly open, constituting a significant observation about a potential gap in the law where the existing cause of action in defamation was insufficient to address the harm suffered by the plaintiffs.