A recent case illustrates the risk journalists take if they embellish defamatory material from a ‘privileged’ source.

The Irish edition of the Sunday Times reported comments by Democratic Unionist MP Peter Robinson about a businessman’s dealings, accusing him of financial malpractice on behalf of the IRA.

The newspaper would have had a cast-iron defence of statutory qualified privilege if it only reported the MP’s remarks, which were made in the House of Commons.

But the newspaper added further details about the businessman’s affairs, increasing the damage to his reputation.

In a preliminary court skirmish in the ensuing libel claim, the newspaper managed to persuade Mr Justice Gray that those parts of the article that were derived from the MP’s speech were covered by qualified privilege. Despite the added defamatory content, the judge agreed they were a “fair and accurate” report of proceedings in Parliament.

However, the rest of the article was not privileged, and the judge ruled that it bore the defamatory meaning that the businessman was guilty of IRA money-laundering, rather than merely that there were reasonable grounds to suspect him. Guilt was therefore what the newspaper would have to prove in any ‘justification’ defence.

Gray J. said: “It may be that as a result, the hurdle which the newspaper will have to surmount when seeking to establish a defence to this action will be a higher one. But that stems from the Sunday Times’s own choice to make substantial additions to, and elaborations of, what Mr Robinson said in Parliament.”

Elsewhere, in criminal proceedings against officials who leaked a secret letter recording discussion between Tony Blair and George W. Bush about Iraq, a judge imposed a permanent gagging order under S.11 of the Contempt of Court Act, restricting what the media can report.

The order was controversial because it bans the media from making any future reference to newspaper articles, already in the public domain, which purport to reveal what was in the secret letter.

Previous case law says the court has no power to gag the media under S.11 over information that is already in the public domain. Media organisations were reportedly planning an appeal.

Over at the PCC, Chairman Sir Christopher Meyer has spoken of the need for more formalised self-regulation of newspapers’ online audio-visual content to ensure the European Commission doesn’t try to intervene with EU regulation. He also predicted closer links between the PCC and Ofcom over any online TV projects.

Long-running litigation, said to have cost £8m in legal fees, ended with the House of Lords ruling that Hello! magazine breached its duty of confidence to OK! magazine by publishing unauthorised photographs of Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones’s wedding.

The Law Lords, unusually split on an intellectual property issue, decided by a majority that Hello! should pay its rival £1m in damages.

Meanwhile, baby- and child-care author Gina Ford won an apology from Mumsnet, a website that hosted an online forum in which some members had posted defamatory statements about her.

Equally high-profile, BP group chief executive Lord Browne spectacularly fell from grace after failing to persuade Mr Justice Eady to maintain an injunction to stop the Mail on Sunday publishing various revelations from his former partner about his private and business life.

Mr Justice Eady decided it was in the public interest for many of the details to be published because they were matters of legitimate concern for shareholders and the company’s Board.