Tesco’s attempt to chill media scrutiny

In the January 15th issue of the New York Review of Books is a chilling narrative of Tesco’s, the giant British retailer, defamation suit against The Guardian written by the paper’s editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger.   He quickly cops to the fact that his award winning reporters got critical facts wrong about these complex accounting and financial arrangements and transactions.

The Guardian attempted to admit its mistakes, issue an apology and have a judge rule on damages but Tesco, probably seizing on an opportunity to chill press scrutiny into its financial dealings, decided to hire a top defamation law firm and hit the paper with a barrage of letters, and legal filings that within 7 weeks of responding, had cost The Guardian more than $500,000. 

England is notorious for its lax libel laws that provide greater protection for giant corporations like Tesco to fight against press inquires into their businesses.  Meanwhile, another British paper came out with stories about Tesco’s strategies to avoid paying corporate taxes.  No other British paper followed up on these new stories and only the Guardian even reported on the investigation but only after spending $17,000 to make sure that the paper had its facts straight.  While the end of the suit resulted in rulings favorable to the Guardian, its not clear how the exorbitant fees run-up by the lawyers will be paid by the parties invovled.

Mr. Rusbridger places the narrative of this defamation lawsuit filed by a giant retailer against a much-less flush newspaper within the context of our current financial crisis.  He suggests that now more than ever we need a vigorous media equipped and able to ask the hard questions and hold these giant entities to account for their actions.  That isn’t easy in Britian where the defamation laws are so skewed towards protecting corporate interests but in the U.S. much of the “media” is owned by giant corporations who engaged in their own agressive tax and accounting policies to avoid corporate taxes.  How likely is it that  the reporters who work for such entities will investigate other corporations who engage in simliar activities?  Even more discouraging, how often are systemic corporate practices scrutinized?  Isn’t far more likely that the media fixates on the worst of the worst so like the Pentagon did during Abu Ghraib Scandal, they can say, its just a few bad apples?

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Tags: British libel laws, corporate tax laws, Linkedin, Tesco, The Guardian