Noel Clarke loses his libel case against the Guardian – Today in Focus Extra

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:09This afternoon, The Guardian and Me Too on trial. How Noel Clarke took us to court and lost.

0:25Just over four years ago, The Guardian published a series of articles about an actor and director called Noel Clarke. Doctor Who fans will remember him as Mickey Smith. He was Billy Piper's boyfriend during the mid-naughties Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant eras. How you doing, Ricky boy? It's Mickey. He was the writer and star of a trilogy of crime dramas. First kiddlethood, then adulthood, and finally brotherhood. Put your hands on the table. You're going to keep quiet. and you're going to stay there. He even won a special BAFTA for his outstanding contribution to British film. So this is for the underrepresented.

1:08Anyone who sits at home believing that they can achieve more. This is particularly for my young black boys and girls out there who never believed that this could happen to them. But the Guardian articles showed a very different side to Noel Clarke. They revealed that behind this glittering career, he abused his power to intimidate, bully and sexually harass women over a period of 15 years. More than 20 women dared to speak out. Among them were actresses he hired, his producer and a starstruck Doctor Who fan. He denied it all.

1:43Paul Lewis:He's the star of two hit TV shows, both now pulled from our screens, following claims that Noel Clarke has sexually harassed women he's worked with. He came out fighting and filed a libel claim saying that the women and the Guardian had lied. And he demanded millions of pounds in damages.

2:07Losing would have been catastrophic. Not just for us and the women he targeted, but for anyone brave enough to speak out in future. But we didn't lose. This morning, a high court judge ruled that what we had published was not just true, it was also in the public interest. From The Guardian, I'm Helen Pidd. Today in Focus, a landmark judgment for investigative journalism in Britain.

2:37Paul Lewis, you are The Guardian's Head of Investigations and one of the journalists who was sued by Noel Clarke. Today must be a very big day for you. How are you feeling? Well, I think I feel relieved because obviously we wanted to win this case. I thought we were going to win. I was really confident in our journalism. I saw how diligently the reporters had done their work. And I sat in court for six weeks and listened to many of the witnesses who came and gave evidence on our behalf. So I thought this was a case we should win. And I'm glad that we've won it. These judgments are long. This one was over 200 pages.

3:14So one of the questions is always, you know, in the weeds of the judgment, how emphatic is it going to be? Are there going to be some criticisms of the way that we acted? And I think overall, the answer has been no. I mean, it is a definitive, I think, unequivocal endorsement of our reporting. And really, first and foremost, it's a vindication for the women who first contacted the Guardian and shared their allegations against Clark. And then in particular, those who came and gave evidence for us in court. Yeah, I mean, the judge concluded that the factual accounts of the Guardian sources are presented in a measured and accurate way without being exaggerated or sensationalised.

3:53So it was very conclusive from the judge. And so, remind us, this has been a long old road to get here. And the original reports that Noel Clarke sued us for were published in 2021, so a fair while ago. Remind us, what were the allegations that we originally published and who was making those allegations? So it was April 2021 that we published what was referred to in court as the first article in which 20 women accused Noel Clark of sexual misconduct over a 15-year period. And that was quite a range of sexual misconduct from sexual harassment to groping, unwanted touching, sharing of sexually explicit images, and secretly filming a naked audition.

4:41So it was a wide range of allegations, but there was a consistency in these stories in that they came from women from different backgrounds, from different levels in the hierarchy of the film and TV industry. But there was a real consistency in all of these accounts. And one of the reasons as the editor, who was principally involved in overseeing the investigation, that I thought these allegations were credible is precisely that. They were consistent. and in many cases they were well corroborated. One of the things we do as journalists is not just rely upon what people tell us but look to see if we can find independent information that's out there.

5:20It could be documentary information, it could be other corroborative sources to try to assess the credibility of the information we've received. And so when we published this story, we felt these were credible allegations. My role was to just shepherd or oversee the investigation and then make the argument for its publication. But the ultimate decision to publish this story was that of the editor-in-chief, Kath Viner, but it was also her decision to fight this case. And I think other editors or other news organisations may have chosen not to fight it. It's an expensive, time-consuming, exhausting process.

5:57And I think it's to Kath's credit that she did that. And that's what journalists want. They want editors who have their back. We thought that while there was, of course, legal risk, and there always will be legal risks for stories like these, it was worth taking that risk and it was worth telling the story. Long time today in Focus listeners will remember that we made an episode based on the investigation. As a result, the podcast, our podcast also became part of the libel action that Noel Clark bought against The Guardian. In English libel law, you have one year, don't you, to file a defamation claim in the High Court.

6:34and Noel Clarke waited until the very last minute. He waited 364 days to file his claim and yet didn't reach court until spring this year. Can you just summarise for us, what was his case? Well, his case in short was that the large majority of these women were lying and if they were not lying, they were exaggerating or misrepresenting events. And there was another twist to his case, which was that the Guardian had engaged in some kind of of opaque conspiracy with a number of these witnesses in order to malign Clark and bring him down in some way. I mean, all of that was nonsense, obviously, and the judge has found in our favor on both counts.

7:17So when you're a media organization in a context like this, there are two defenses that you can run. One is that what you published was true. And the other is that what you published was in the public interest. And we ran both defenses and on both counts, the judge found it our favour. Yeah, he said the women were lying, but did he really explain why? I know that with some of them, he suggested that they were jealous of him because he'd won that lifetime BAFTA. I think one of the reasons Clark struggled in this case was because it was difficult for him to concoct reasons why these women were lying, because they weren't lying.

7:51They were telling the truth about what they said had happened to them. In each instance, and there were many, I mean, the thing you have to remember about this case I think one of the reasons we had a strong legal defense is the same reason this was a robust journalistic investigation, which was the sheer number of women who were making very similar allegations against Clark. So it strains credulity to think that as many as 20 women were all, this is what his claim was with respect to the first article, lying to us about what had happened to them. And on a similar level, it seems highly improbable that such a large number of women would come to the high court and risk perjury and lie in front of a judge about what they said had happened to them.

8:37So I think for that reason, we were always cautiously confident about this case. But that doesn't make it any easier. And you said, Helen, that this article was published over four years ago now. It's not that we've just stood still in that four year period. litigation is a brutal experience and there is a lot that you have to go through and one of the frustrations even in this moment of relief that we've won one of the frustrations is the opportunity cost you know all of the different things that myself my colleagues who are editors or reporters of the guardian could have been working on but have not been working on because we've been fighting this legal case you know that can be frustrating and it's a it's a challenge that unfortunately is felt much more keenly for those of us who work in the UK than other countries around the world.

9:27We have a legal system here, which is favourable toward claimants, toward people who want to bring libel or defamation proceedings. It's much more difficult for the journalist or for the media organisation. Litigation is an occupational hazard. When it happens, you have to fight these cases and you have to make sure that you have a good enough case to win. So in England and Wales in particular, it's very difficult to defend cases like this because the burden of proof is on the defendant, i.e. the guardian in this case. So we had to go to court and prove that all the claims were true. What was at stake for us, do you think, had we lost?

10:03That's an interesting question. I mean, I think it would have been pretty bad had we lost. I mean, I never really countenanced it, to be honest, because I just thought, you know, we had behaved responsibly. The reporters, Sharon Carlay and Lucy Osborne, had done a really diligent, methodical, careful job. We'd represented these allegations in a fair and balanced way, and we believed that they were true. There was always a question about whether or not the women, or enough of the women who had these experiences with Clark, would come to court. One thing is talking to journalists about your encounters with someone, a public figure like Noel Clark.

10:43It's a difficult thing to do, to talk about intimate, private, sometimes very traumatic experiences. That's one thing, and that's not easy. Talking about those same experiences in court, under cross-examination, by a barrister or KC who wants to try to undermine you in a very adversarial setting, and in public, in a public court, is a big ask. I sat through the evidence and the testimony of these women. And I found it difficult to listen to, I have to say. And I think all of us at The Guardian are deeply thankful to those women, the courage they had in coming to court, assisting us with our defence.

11:26And I think this is more than anything else, a judgment that is in vindication of them and their experiences. We're going to be hearing more about what these women went through, both with Clark and in court in a full length episode in September. But it was really quite remarkable wasn't it that 26 people came to court for us to back up our case and some of them were talking about really traumatic things that had happened to them there was one actress who told the court about filming a sex scene with Clark where she said she could feel his erection because he wasn't wearing a modesty patch there was another actress who said that Clark filmed her naked from behind and that he made her bend over so that he could see her vulva so obviously there was a lot at stake for these women, but it was very important for The Guardian to expose Noel Clarke for who he is.

12:16And you say that you never thought seriously about us losing, but what would the consequences have been? I think a lot was at stake for The Guardian, but not just for The Guardian. I mean, financially, had Clarke succeeded, I think he had pleaded 10 million in his lawsuit, but had indicated in court that he wanted damages, special damages of up to 70 million. That's a huge amount of money for any news organization. And so that was obviously hanging over us. But I also think that just as significantly, maybe even more significantly, one of the things at stake was our credibility. I mean, he was accusing us of publishing falsehoods.

12:57I also just think there was something else at stake here, which was about this kind of reporting and whether or not you can do it in England and Wales. And there had not been in the aftermath of the Harvey Weinstein and Me Too era an enormous number of stories about men who were accused of some kind of sexual misconduct in the UK. I mean, there had been some, but not a huge number. And this was one of the first really big ones that had a really significant impact. So I think lots of journalists in the UK were watching this judgment because they are keenly interested to see where a court would fall on this question, whether this kind of reporting, holding a public figure to account over accusations of misconduct of this kind, would be found to be in the public interest.

13:49And what was the level of the bar that you needed to overcome to be able to publish a story of this kind? And so I think in that sense, this is a judgment that is beneficial, not just to The Guardian, but to reporters across the UK. Paul, thank you very much Thank you That was Paul Lewis, The Guardian's investigations editor Thanks to him and to everyone at The Guardian involved in the Noel Clark investigation and to those who helped us defend it in court in particular Theo Rees-Fallow and Zoe Norton, our head of legal We'd also like to thank Galen Furman from Wigan Law Firm and our barrister Gavin Miller-Casey

14:28Paul Lewis:Today in Focus is going on its summer break next week but we will be back in September with an in-depth episode about the Noel Clark case, which goes behind the scenes of the original investigation and the High Court case that followed. It goes without saying that this sort of journalism is expensive and risky, and it's only possible with the support of Guardian listeners and readers like you. If you want to help us stand up to bullies and predators in future, perhaps you'd consider becoming a Guardian supporter. Go to theguardian.com forward slash todayinfocuspod to find out how. And that is all for today.

15:02This episode was produced by Alex Atak, Eli Block and Eleanor Biggs and presented by me, Helen Pitt. Sound design was by Eli Block and the executive producer was Sammy Kent. We'll be back on the 1st of September.

15:17This is The Guardian. Amen.