LIM GUAN ENG v THE CHINA PRESS BERHAD

Case Significance

Illustrates the limits of a media organisation's qualified-privilege defence under the Defamation Act 1957 when it publishes a third party's defamatory statements about a public figure, holding the newspaper liable and awarding RM150,000 in general and aggravated damages.

This decision of the High Court of Malaya at Georgetown determines the companion libel suit, tried together with the action against the politician who spoke at a press conference, brought by the same plaintiff — a well-known politician — against The China Press Berhad, the newspaper that published a journalist's article reporting what was said. Both suits arose from the same press conference, and the question was whether the newspaper was liable for the defamatory imputations carried in its article and in the press statement circulated to the media, and whether it could rely on defences such as qualified privilege under the Defamation Act 1957.

The court examined the meaning of the words published by the newspaper and whether they were defamatory of the plaintiff, applying the ordinary principles of libel to a media defendant reporting a political press conference. It held that the newspaper could not rely on a section 12(2) defence of qualified privilege to publish what was found to be defamatory of the plaintiff, reasoning that to allow it to do so would sanction the publication of untrue and defamatory imputations under the cloak of privilege. Having found the newspaper liable, and applying the same restraint it expressed in the companion suit — that defamation actions must not be turned into an engine of oppression and that the days of million-Ringgit awards had passed — the court ordered, in the plaintiff's favour against the newspaper, payment of RM150,000 as general and aggravated damages together with interest. The lower award against the newspaper, compared with that against the speaker in the companion suit, reflects the court's differentiation between the originator of the defamatory statements and the media outlet that republished them in the course of reporting a newsworthy event. The judgment illustrates how the courts weigh a media organisation's privilege defence when it reports and publishes a third party's defamatory statements about a public figure, and how responsibility and quantum are apportioned between speaker and publisher.