Reynolds privilege is the name given to a type of defence which the media can use when they have published an allegation that is untrue. Essentially, if (i) the media was under a duty to publish the material in question; (ii) the people to whom the material was published had a legitimate interest in reading it; and (iii) the media behaved responsibly, the publication can be successfully defended.
In the case of Reynolds v Times Newspapers Ltd, the Court set out ten guiding principles, now known as the ‘Reynolds factors’ which would be considered in deciding the question of whether a publication had behaved responsibly. The ten factors were: the seriousness of the allegation; whether it was on a matter of public concern; the source of the allegation; the steps taken to verify the information; the status of the information; the urgency of the matter; whether comment had been sought from the claimant; whether the gist of the claimant’s side of the story had been published; the tone of the article and the circumstances of the publication (the last being a ‘catch all’ provision). Later cases have emphasised the ten factors are not “hurdles” that all have to be gone through; nevertheless the Courts will carefully consider them all in deciding whether a publication has behaved responsibly.
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