John Ware wins £90k libel damages over BBC Panorama ‘rogue journalism’ slur

Panorama journalist John Ware has been awarded damages of £90,000 after winning a libel case against an online publisher who suggested his programme examining antisemitism in Labour under Jeremy Corbyn was a “rogue journalism”.

High Court judge Mr Justice Knowles said an article by Press Gang editor Paddy French “did cause, or was likely to cause” serious damage to experienced journalist Ware’s reputation.

Knowles said the scale of the £90,000 damages reflected the seriousness of French’s defamatory allegations, and the fact he had circulated them widely to senior journalists, adding to Ware’s “palpable anger and distress”.

Ware had sued for libel after French published an online article and pamphlet attacking the July 2019 Panorama episode “Is Labour antisemitic?”

He had initially sued French for £50,000 over a pamphlet titled “Is the BBC anti-Labour?”, which he published via his Press Gang website.

French had claimed Ware’s Panorama programme had been “a piece of rogue journalism that presented just one side of the argument, ignored basic facts and bent the truth to breaking point”.

His arguments were similar to those taken up by a string of pro-Corbyn activists who aimed to discredit Ware, and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who ordered the party to pay “substantial damages” to seven whistleblowers over “defamatory and false allegations” made about them, and the journalist, after the Panorama was broadcast.

He had distributed the slurs about the programme to more than 100 senior figures at the BBC, Channel 4 News, Sky News, LBC, the Guardian, the Times, the Sunday Times and the Sun on Sunday.

Justice Knowles also issued a permanent injunction stopping French from repeating the allegations at the centre of the claim.

Ware said he had decided to take legal action “whatever the risk” after seeing a demonstration outside New Broadcasting House in London in December 2019 that had been organised by French in connection with the article and pamphlet.

He said he expected to take some criticism as a journalist but what French published was “not acceptable”.

In 2021 Mr Justice Saini said that French’s words were “clearly defamatory” as they meant that he was a “rogue journalist who had engaged in dirty tricks aimed at harming the Labour Party’s chances of winning the general election by authoring and presenting an edition of Panorama in which he presented a biased and knowingly false presentation of the extent and nature of antisemitism within the party, deliberately ignoring contrary evidence”.

French  then claimed he was dropping a truth defence as a result of this ruling, but a judge later derided this move as “cynical.”

Last month French said he was “withdrawing” from the case altogether.

But Justice Knowles concluded this move  “very seriously exacerbated the damage caused to the claimant, by seeking to ensure that any judgment in his favour would be seen by his publishers as arising from some sort of unwarranted or unfair judicial intervention, as opposed to the reality, namely, that the defendant had no defence”.

At a hearing this month, without French being present, Ware said: “ I wanted my day in court,  but Mr French has slithered away.”

In a statement following Wednesday’s hearing French said:”This case raises serious questions about press freedom in Britain.

“I believe I am the first journalist to be sued by a reporter working for the BBC over criticism of a BBC programme that that reporter was involved in making.

“I am concerned that the director general and the BBC board appear to have allowed the case to go ahead. ”