That Danny!
Robert Murat, the first named suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, has settled his libel action against a number of British newspapers over claims he was involved in her disappearance. And the sum of the settlement? It is estimated at somewhere in the region of £500,000.
To you and me this might be a large sum of money, but in context it raises an important question: Is this sort of sum a deterrent against libellous press?
If you look at the detail carefully, you will realise that between eleven media outlets this averages a payout of £45,000 per company. This is hardly an enormous expense, if you consider that these are vast organisations with multi-million pound budgets. In fact, it doesn’t even tickle the bottom-line.
When Madeleine McCann disappeared and Murat was first named as a suspect, British newspapers had to take a call as to whether they should take the risk and apply different rules to Murat’s case because he was abroad and there was less likely to be an issue with contempt of court proceedings, or libel. The Murat story sold large quantities of newspapers, and made substantial revenue for media outlets.
If media owners look back on Murat’s libel case and consider whether they would have reported it in the same way again knowing of today’s outcome, I suspect they probably would.
So while the Press Gazette’s view is that “Big payout for Murat could increase pressure on journalists“, media bosses may well look at the bottom line and say – it’s just the cost of doing business.
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