The Law vs. The Truth: Getting to the Bottom of the Richard D. Hall Case

Part 5 - An Abuse of Media Freedom?

Part 5 - An Abuse of Media Freedom?

Introduction

Part 4 of this series examined the legal basis of the harassment claim made against Richard D. Hall by Martin and Eve Hibbert. It concluded that there is no credible sense in which Hall’s conduct, as complained of by the claimants [11], meets the legal criteria for harassment. Hall did not engage in a course of conduct in which he repeatedly “targeted” victims for oppressive and unacceptable treatment. His conduct did not amount to harassment of the claimants, with whom he had never had a single personal interaction of any kind. And it is not the case that he “should have known” that his conduct amounted to harassment [202].

Rather, Hall’s conviction for harassment was premised on legal chicanery, such as refusing to allow him to present his most important evidence, skewed (and sometimes false) interpretations of case law, biased descriptions of his publications, omission of key information, and twisting the meaning of particular words, concepts, and phrases. In short, the law was not impartially applied, and justice was not served.

One important aspect of the case that we have not so far explored relates to media freedom. Hall was being sued, not just in his capacity as a private citizen, but also as an independent investigative journalist and broadcaster [2].

The square brackets in this part refer to the relevant paragraph of the Judgment unless otherwise stated.

Hall’s conviction has significant implications for the so-called “alternative media,” and the legal precedent that has now been set is consistent with the creeping transnational criminalisation of dissent that I have described in Wall Street, the Nazis, and the Crimes of the Deep State (pp. 14-15). Indeed, setting the legal precedent is probably why the case took place in the High Court of Justice, as opposed to a County Court, where Defence barrister Oakley claimed it should have been held.

Given what is on the line in terms of media freedom in the UK (and elsewhere), the response of the “alternative media” to Hall’s unfair and unjust conviction has, with the notable exception of Iain Davis, been nothing short of appalling, as we will see in Part 9.

But first, let us examine what the Judgment has to say about Hall’s alleged abuse of media freedom, which, we are farcically expected to believe, was worse than anything the British tabloid press has ever done when it comes to harassment.

Steyn’s Bombshell Verdict

After 46 pages of tedious but necessary preamble, Steyn drops her bombshell verdict against Hall seemingly out of the blue, buried part way down a long section, without any clear and compelling rationale in the build up: 

In my judgment, Mr Price’s summary of the defendant’s conduct which I have set out at paragraph 13 above is accurate. I have no doubt that his course of conduct was a negligent, indeed reckless, abuse of media freedom. Applying the legal approach that I have outlined to the parties’ respective Convention rights, I find that Mr Hall’s course of conduct amounted to harassment. [181]

The “shock and awe” effect that this bombshell delivery has is presumably intended to knock the reader off balance. Any logical form of argumentation first offers premises, reasons, etc., before reaching a conclusion. Not so here. Instead, there is a seemingly arbitrary exercise of power — the moment of decision — without any justificatory rationale having been offered. That “rationale,” such as it is, only comes later. I do not know if this is standard rhetorical practice among judges to enhance the impression of their authority at the key moment, or whether Steyn is deploying every trick in the book to make sure that her indefensible Judgment is not questioned.

At this key moment, when the hammer is effectively slammed down, the claimants are not mentioned. Hall’s conduct purportedly amounted to harassment, yet there is no mention of, say, his supposedly oppressive conduct towards a “vulnerable young person” [183] — that comes two paragraphs later. Instead, Steyn’s immediate focus is media freedom, indicating what is foremost in her mind.

The overarching logic is not difficult to discern: Hall has been found guilty of abusing media freedom in a way that the legacy media never did, therefore there must be tighter regulations on the independent media — mechanisms for making sure it does not challenge official narratives. In that respect, the case was never fundamentally about Hall, or the Hibberts, or even the Manchester Arena incident, but, rather, narrative control and the need to discipline the independent media so that it does not present the kind of evidence that Hall did — evidence which, in Davis’ view, points towards the biggest political scandal in modern British history.

Let us return to Steyn’s finding that “Mr Price’s summary of the defendant’s conduct which I have set out at paragraph 13 above is accurate” [181]. Prosecution barrister Price summarised Hall’s conduct as follows:

alleging that the event which catastrophically and fundamentally changed both of their lives simply did not happen; making those allegations concertedly, publicly and commercially; alleging that the claimants (and many hundreds of others) are committing the most heinous dishonesty, a deception upon the whole world; taking each and every public statement made by Martin Hibbert and subjecting it to purported statement analysis; gathering together, and making it clear he will gather together, any snippet of the claimants’ information that happens to come into, or close to, the public domain; and seeking out and finding Ms Gillbard on social media, visiting her and Eve’s home, and taking video footage of them. He [Price] said that the claimants feel suffocated and permanently surveilled by the defendant, and his followers who believe his theory. [13] 

This, then, is what supposedly constitutes “a negligent, indeed reckless, abuse of media freedom,” amounting to harassment [181]. But does it really?

As we will see below, Hall did not make allegations against anyone; he expressed honestly held, evidence-based opinion. However unattractive, unreasonable, and regrettable that opinion may seem to some, it does not cross the line into harassment [151]. The Court can only “know” that the life-changing event described definitely happened, because the Summary Judgment decreed it so, yet the Summary Judgment is suspect. Public statements are legitimately amenable to scrutiny (however flawed the method of analysis is assumed to be). There is nothing illegal about collating publicly available information, especially given Hibbert’s admission during the trial that Hall had only looked at publicly available information that he (Hibbert) had “authorised to be seen.” Investigative journalists routinely find ways of gaining access to people who may be able to shed light on their investigation, and this includes secret recording. Although the claimants may “feel suffocated and permanently surveilled” [13], in harassment cases the court must not be “swayed by the subjective feelings of the claimant” [160].

Thus, contrary to Steyn’s ruling at [181], nothing in Price’s summary of Hall’s conduct [13] indicates that Hall abused media freedom or is guilty of harassment.

Harassment by Publication

Having had no direct personal interactions with the claimants whatsoever, the only way Hall could have been found guilty of “harassing” them is through the legal device of “harassment by publication.”

In the Judgment, harassment by publication is mentioned three times in the cited case law [at 155, 165, 171]. Tellingly, however, it is not used directly in relation to Hall. Perhaps the reason for this is that Hall was being sued in his capacity as an “independent journalist and broadcaster” [2] and “No claim of harassment against a media organisation has succeeded at trial” [162]. So, perhaps Steyn does not want to draw attention to the fact that, by implicitly finding Hall guilty of harassment by publication, she is setting an important legal precedent, helping to facilitate the future criminalisation of certain types of investigative journalism. 

The standard for finding a media entity guilty of harassment is extremely high: “The courts have repeatedly observed that it will be ‘a rare or exceptional case’ in which harassment is established in respect of media publications” [162]. In fact, as Warby J ruled in Sube v News Group Newspapers Ltd [2020] EWHC 1125 (QB), [2020] EMLR 25, “nothing short of a conscious or negligent abuse of media freedom will justify a finding of harassment” [161]. “Negligent […] abuse of media freedom” is the phrase used by Steyn at [181], so she is applying the relevant case law here without, however, making explicit that harassment by publication is being invoked.

Paragraph 84 of Warby’s judgment in Sube, not cited by Steyn, notes that “the task that confronts the claimants is to establish conduct that represents an abuse of media freedom so serious that it deserves the label of criminality. That means that the burden on them is a heavy one.” 

How, then, did the Hibberts manage to establish in the eyes of a High Court judge that Hall had abused media freedom so negligently that he had broken the law around harassment? 

For context, we should remember the notoriety of the British tabloid media for hounding figures of interest, e.g. by sending paparazzi to follow them and take pictures without their consent, and by repeatedly publishing derogatory material about them, most of which is made up. The British tabloid press’s treatment of Meghan Markle is one obvious example: Prince Harry claimed that he and his wife left the UK because of the “toxic environment” of “control and fear” created by the tabloid media. The Society of Editors replied that the media were holding the "rich and powerful to account." If media freedom in the UK is so powerful that even a senior member of the Royal Family chose to emigrate to escape what could obviously be construed as harassment, what hope did the Hibberts have of proving that Richard D. Hall had behaved even worse than the British tabloid press?

Abuse of Media Freedom?

Since When Have “False Allegations” Constituted an Abuse of Media Freedom?

According to the Judgment,

Mr Hall has abused media freedom. Over a period of years, he has repeatedly published false allegations, based on the flimsiest of analytical techniques, and dismissing the obvious, tragic reality to which so many ordinary people have attested [189]. 

Is that so? We will come onto the issue of whether Hall made “allegations” in a moment. The only reason why Hall’s perspective can be written off as “false” here is that “reality” was pre-determined by the Summary Judgment — not very convincingly, as we saw in Part 3.

But since when has making false allegations constituted an abuse of media freedom in the eyes of the law? The media make false allegations about people all the time, yet this has never previously translated into a successful harassment claim.

Indeed, in Thomas v News Group Newspapers Ltd [2001] EWCA Civ 1233; [2002] EMLR 4, Lord Phillips MR finds:

34. … In general, press criticism, even if robust, does not constitute unreasonable conduct and does not fall within the natural meaning of harassment. …

35. … before press publications are capable of constituting harassment, they must be attended by some exceptional circumstance which justifies sanctions and the restriction on the freedom of expression that they involve. It is also common ground that such circumstances will be rare.

Although Steyn cites this case law at [157], she does not specify what the “exceptional circumstance” is that differentiates the Richard D. Hall case from every other instance of media misbehaviour in British history when it comes to harassment. Is it that Hall’s investigative journalism threatens to blow the lid off a scandal of vast proportions?

Caricaturing of Methods

When Steyn accuses Hall of utilising “the flimsiest of analytical techniques” [189], she disingenuously ignores Hall’s primary empirical evidence relating to the crime scene, and instead devotes extensive attention to his use of statement analysis plus one page of numerology in the Book’s appendix in an attempt to discredit his methods [100-125, 130].

Hall is clear in the appendix, however, that “Numerology and the occult is not part of the remit of this book” (2020, p. 415). Hall also told Davison during the Summary Judgment hearing that, in terms of the evidence he had submitted, he had “left out all the statement analysis. There is only evidence which would be suitable for a trial that is in this document, and it is 80 pages.” Hall’s use of statement analysis was only ever a secondary method. It is the primary empirical evidence which he presents that leads him to conclude that there was no bomb.

Davison made sure that none of that evidence was admissible at the trial, however, allowing Steyn to caricature Hall’s methods. For example, Steyn finds that Hall “had no positive evidence that Mr Hibbert had lied about what happened to him and his daughter, and no sensible basis for believing he had done so” [188]. The “sensible basis” is the primary evidence that was wrongly struck out by the Summary Judgment.

For Commercial Gain?

Steyn claims that Hall’s “false allegations” likely reached “well over 100,000” people in the UK and were made “for commercial gain,” albeit “only sufficient to enable him to continue his work” [189]. 

To put this into proper context, consider Hall’s testimony at the trial:

Mr Hall: My tax return that I filed just recently was just over £10,000 per annum. So to say that I am profiting, I would say is not correct. […] I would say I am earning enough money to live on, in order to carry out investigative journalism full time.

According the Office for National Statistics, the average salary (gross) in the UK is £34,632. Hall earns less than a third of that. Therefore, it is highly misleading to claim, as Price and Steyn both did, that Hall’s work on Manchester was “for commercial gain.” For what it is worth, the salary of a High Court judge is £225,092.

There are much easier, more reliable, less risky, and more lucrative ways of making a living than Hall’s “industriousness” [213] in producing the content he does, the vast majority of which he gives away for free on his website (and his YouTube channel, while it lasted, was not monetized). Money is clearly not Hall’s primary motivation. 

Allegation or Opinion?

Did Hall Make “False Allegations”?

Contrary to Steyn’s finding that Hall had, for years, made “false allegations” against the claimants [189], this was not established during the trial, despite fierce attempts by the Prosecution to do so.

Hall has been consistently careful to claim that he is offering honest opinion in his publications, as opposed to making statements of fact. For example, at the beginning of Manchester — The Night of the Bang, we find the following disclaimer:

Throughout the book, opinions are expressed by the author and by Genevieve Lewis about the veracity of statements made by those involved in the 2017 Manchester Arena incident. All the opinions contained herein are not being expressed as factual claims. All the conclusions and assertions made in this book concerning whether individuals have lied or have been untruthful are expressed purely as the author’s opinions. (Hall, 2020, p. iv)

Hall and Lewis here are interpreting evidence to the best of their abilities, regardless of what one thinks about the reliability of their methods. They are explicitly not making allegations about anyone. Normally, such a disclaimer would be sufficient to establish this.

Nevertheless, Price accused Hall of alleging that the claimants were “lying” no fewer than 19 times in his opening remarks. Hibbert, under cross-examination by Price, described Hall’s Book as “a book full of lies.” Under cross-examination by Oakley, Hibbert recalled first becoming aware of “a conspiracy theorist accusing Eve and me of lying about being involved in the attack.” Gillbard wrote in her witness statement: “Eve cannot understand why someone would try to say she was lying about this.” Evidently, establishing that Hall had made allegations of deceit against the claimants was a central pillar of the Prosecution’s case.

In cross-examination, Price tried repeatedly, without success, to tease out from Hall that he had made allegations of deceit against the claimants:

Mr Price: And, and it posits that Eve was not injured in the blast, so is lying if she ever says that she was. And I am going to suggest to you that those are significant allegations, and that you should have given them an opportunity to comment.

Mr Hall: But I do not say it that way. I say that there is no primary evidence that anyone was injured in that room, nor [...] was there any damage to that room. So if someone contradicts, in a statement, the primary evidence, I am going to go with the primary evidence to form an opinion [...] on whether that person’s statement is accurate.

[...] The statement I read out earlier [...] specifically said I was not accusing any of the people involved of wrongdoing.

Mr Price: Just bear with me. You accused Martin of storytelling and being deceptive about his and his daughter’s injuries.

Mr Hall: That is not true.

Mr Price: Right.

Mr Hall: It was Genevieve Lewis who [...] said that.

Mr Price: But you published it.

Mr Hall: Correct.

Mr Price: So you published a statement that, that Martin was being deceptive.

Mr Hall: [An] opinion that he is being deceptive.

Mr Price: And that he is story telling about --

Mr Hall: That was the statement analyst’s conclusion.

Mr Price: That, would you agree with me, is a significant allegation?

Mr Hall: No, it is an opinion. How can an opinion be an allegation?

And again in this exchange:

Mr Price: Do you accept that some people believe that the attack happened?

Mr Hall: Well, of course.

Mr Price: Do you accept that, for those people to see you accuse its victims of deceit and fraud, it would be obvious that that would upset the victims?

Mr Hall: Where […] have I accused them of deceit and fraud?

Mr Price: You have accused them of lying about having been victims of a bomb?

Mr Hall: No, I have not. Show me where I have accused them of lying.

And again below:

Mr Price: Martin and Eve Hibbert. You do not suggest that they may be mistaken. You go after Martin as a liar, do you not?

Mr Hall: I would like to refer you to a paragraph in my book to answer that question.

Mr Price: By all means.

Mr Hall: [...] “I will also point out here that if participants have lied in their media interviews due to being subject to an agreement [they, sorry] they may believe that what they are doing is ethically justified. They may have been given reasons by organisers why a mock exercise was necessary. If I [if I] or the statement analyst, forms an opinion that participants have made false statements in their interviews, we are not making a moral judgment about whether that person should or should not have lied. We are not making any accusation that the participants have done anything wrong or broken the law. We are just expressing an opinion based on available evidence, about whether we believe what they have said is true or false. It is perfectly legal to have an opinion about whether somebody is telling the truth and it is perfectly legal to express that opinion.”

Mr Price: So, so you say. It is not just that Martin and Eve are lying about everything, it is that everybody who claims to have been involved, injured, had a loved one murdered, is also lying. That is right, is it not? That, that, that is the product of your statement analysis videos?

Mr Hall: Well, because of the nature of the event, that it was made to look very realistic, many of the statements are true. It is [...] the statements which relate to there being a bomb which killed people which, the statement analysis has flagged, there is deception. And that, they are not my conclusions. [T]here is nowhere in this book that I say [...] that Martin is lying as, as a statement of fact. The statement analysis concluded that there was deception in his interview, but it is widely accepted within the industry of statement analysis that all conclusions are opinion.

And again here:

Mr Hall: Well, I have no evidence of a contract or anything like that, but there has to be some explanation as to --

Mr Price: As to why he [Hibbert] is lying.

Mr Hall: No, as to, to explain the fact that they, to explain everything that has happened, considering the primary most important evidence, important evidence, which is there was not a bomb. And that evidence is way stronger than all of the witness testimony.

The primary evidence, which is video evidence of the crime scene, taken four minutes after the blast [...] outweighs every single statement that you will read.

Thus, despite his repeated assertions and insinuations, Price did not present any hard evidence that Hall was accusing anyone of lying. He merely tried putting words into Hall’s mouth in the hope that Hall would leave them unchallenged (thus tacitly signalling agreement). Hall’s defence was robust, however.

Given that the Prosecution was unable to establish (as opposed to repeatedly asserting) that Hall had accused people of lying, and given that Steyn’s “false allegations” ruling [189] is unsupported by a reference to any other part of the Judgment (or any other document or piece of evidence), that ruling is without an explicit foundation.

Hypothetically Speaking

As though aware that the “false allegations” ruling [189] might not stand up, Steyn, in the next paragraph, finds that Hall’s

attempts to shield himself, in each publication, by asserting that he was expressing no more than his personal opinion would not detract from the clear impression conveyed to the hypothetical ordinary, reasonable viewer or reader that he was alleging that the claimants (and many others) were “crisis actors,” who were engaged in a deception upon the whole world. [190]

The phrase “hypothetical [...], reasonable” stands out, because it is the same phrase used by Lord Sumption in Hayes [at 15], namely, that if an alleged harasser has thought rationally about his conduct for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime,

then he has the relevant purpose. The court will not test his conclusions by reference to the view which a hypothetical reasonable man in his position would have formed [my emphasis].

Therefore, provided one accepts that Hall thought rationally with a view to preventing or detecting crime, then the one thing that cannot be done legally is to test his opinions against a “hypothetical, reasonable” position.

Steyn cites Sumption’s finding at [168], but later rejects Hall’s defence that he was acting reasonably to detect or prevent crime [205-208]. I rebut her reasons for doing so in Part 8. By Sumption’s logic, it follows from my rebuttal that paragraph [190] cannot stand.

Steyn’s idea of “reasonable” in [190] is, in any case, confined to the opinions of one Master and two judges of the High Court arrogantly claiming to know what took place in the City Room on May 22, 2017, while systematically excluding Hall’s forensic evidence for no good reason. Conversely, if one is willing to look openly and honestly at that evidence, it is entirely reasonable to question the official version of events.

Price pursued a line of questioning intended to get Hall to envisage a hypothetical scenario that would discredit his own work:

Mr Price: If you were to revise your assessment of the credibility of Martin and Eve Hibbert’s claims to have been injured in the attack, if you were to have revised your assessment of their credibility and accept that it is true what they are saying, the book is discredited, and the film is discredited.

Mr Hall: Well, you are asking me a completely hypothetical question, which, I do not see how that scenario could ever occur, based on the evidence that I have seen.

Price tried again:

Mr Price: I now want you to suspend your own belief for a moment and hypothesise. [...] I heard you object to doing that previously, but I want you to try and do it now. What if Martin is telling the truth? What if Martin is telling the truth about what happened to him? What if he lay on the floor that night, unable to move, as his daughter died before his eyes, so he thought, what if that is true?

Mr Hall: Well, it is, it is a hypothetical question which I see no evidence [...] or prospect of ever occurring.

Mr Price: Now, just bear with me, because I am going to ask you to, to come with me on this, in this hypothetical situation, just for a moment. What, what if it is true that the last time Martin ever walked was at 22.30 on the night of the attack?

Mr Hall: Sorry, could you restate that?

Mr Price: What if it is true that the last time he ever walked was at 10.30 on that night in Manchester? What if it is true that Eve’s development into her teens was violently arrested by the attack because she suffered a catastrophic brain injury? What if it is true that that is what happened to these people? If that is true, would you accept that it would be wrong to accuse them of lying about it?

Mr Hall: Well, you can get the evidence to show me that it is true by agreeing to my [...] application for the CCTV evidence.

Mr Price: Just answer my question. If, in my hypothesis, and if you object to it, and that is your final position, that is fine. But can you answer this? If it is true, just use your imagination and enter a world in which it is true that this happened, is it wrong to accuse them of lying about it?

Mr Hall: I am not a legal person, I do not know what the rules are on answering completely hypothetical questions that I believe there is no evidence for, so perhaps the judge can help me on that.

Mr Price: That is OK. That is, if that is the position you wish to adopt, I am not going to take that any further.

Thus, once again, Price failed to trap Hall into accepting the premises of what he was saying. Had Hall agreed that a “hypothetical” scenario in which the claimants were telling the truth would discredit the Book and the Film and make it “wrong to accuse them of lying about it,” then all it would have taken to find him guilty, by a logic which he himself “accepted,” would have been a determination by the judge that Price’s hypothetical scenario was “reasonable.”

Ofcom Standards

Setting Standards

Since when has it been appropriate for the judiciary to interfere in press freedom? As Sir John Saunders writes in the Manchester Arena Inquiry report,

Freedom of the press is an essential part of our democracy. It is not appropriate for me to seek to define the circumstances in which the media should interview emergency service personnel. Nor is it for me to suggest standards in relation to what material can or cannot be included. (§19.57)

Why on earth, therefore, would the High Court of Justice seek to interfere with Richard D. Hall’s freedom, as an investigative journalist, to report on the facts as he finds them?

Whilst Saunders, a former High Court judge, did not see fit to “suggest standards” in relation to press freedom, the same cannot be said of Steyn, who was all too willing to defer to Prosecution barrister Price’s suggest that Ofcom (the communications regulator in the UK) standards be followed in relation to Hall [184].

Steyn recognises that “The version [of Ofcom standards] in evidence was published after the September 2019 visit, and in any event, Mr Hall was not bound by it” [184]. One wonders, therefore, about the legal validity of judging Hall’s conduct according to those standards. Nevertheless, Steyn treats those standards as laying out “ordinary principles of fairness and respect for privacy which can reasonably be expected of journalists” [184]. 

§7.14 of the Ofcom standards stipulates that surreptitious filming is only warranted “if it is in the public interest and cannot reasonably be obtained by other means.” §7.15 points to the need to safeguard the interests of any “vulnerable person” who “might be at risk of significant harm as a result of taking part in a programme.” §8.3 notes people’s right to privacy even if they happen to have been caught up in events covered by the news, both at the time in any later programmes about those events.    

Having laid out the Ofcom standards in detail and confirmed Hall’s familiarity with them, Steyn notes Hall’s contention that “the objective is to report the truth. Whatever effect that has on someone else is the effect it has” [185]. However, what Hall actually said was “the objective is to find out and report the truth. Whatever effect that has on someone else […] is the effect it has. It is the pursuit and the publication of the truth” (my emphasis). Note that “find out” and “pursuit [...] of” the truth do not feature in Steyn’s rendering. It is as though she sees the role of the media, not as conducting its own investigations which might hold power to account, but, rather, as simply reporting (repeating) “the truth,” presumably as determined by the state and enforced by High Court judges if necessary. 

Steyn adds “Mr Hall said that a journalistic enquiry does not amount to harassment” [186]. But those were not his exact words. In fact, as we are about to see, Hall mounted a much robust defence than that in relation to Ofcom standards.

Hall’s Public Interest Defence

Steyn neglects to mention here that Hall pleaded a “public interest” defence as per Ofcom §7.14, although she does later [at 194] dismiss any such defence. Hall argued:

my actions were in the public interest [...] because the primary evidence of this event is at odds with many of the witness statements, and this is across the board [...] It was in the public interest to examine all of the witnesses, and to try and find out where the truth lies.

This was, moreover, before the Saunders Inquiry and the Hashem Abedi trial had taken place.

Steyn finds that “By the time he [Hall] visited Eve’s home, the nature and outcome of the Attack had been extensively reported, including by an independent panel in the Kerslake Report” [182], which was published on March 27, 2018, exploring the adequacy of the emergency response.

However, the Kerslake Report ruled out of scope “issues concerning the cause of death of the people who died, the immediate circumstances in which each of the people died, and any question of the potential survivability from the injuries sustained by any of those who died” (p. 16). So, we explicitly cannot look to the Kerslake Report to find out about the nature of the alleged attack.

Therefore, when Hall was pursuing his investigation of the Manchester Arena incident in 2018-2019, no findings had been published regarding what actually took place in the City Room. Especially given what he was uncovering, Hall’s investigation was unmistakably in the public interest.

Fairness and Respect for Privacy

In terms of the “ordinary principles of fairness and respect for privacy which can reasonably be expected of journalists” [184], the Judgment neglects to mention Hall’s testimony that 

“I reported that three people came out of a house, got into a car, put a wheelchair in the back and drove off, implying that that person has a disability. That was fair. I reported exactly what was what, what I discovered in my investigation. I do not see how that can be construed as unfair.” 

In principle, anyone could have observed this from the road. As Oakley told Steyn, Hall “lawfully filmed from the public highway. Mr Hall was perfectly entitled to do this,” much as journalists outside the court had been photographing Hall and Hibbert without their knowledge or consent. 

Hall writes on p. 221 of the Book: “My camera was not close enough to see any injuries, nor make a definite identification. From this evidence I suspect Eve Hibbert is in a wheelchair.” Thus, Hall did not make any definitive claims about Eve. He did not even identify her. He merely reported his suspicions, having deleted the footage without broadcasting it [85]. To construe this as an unfair privacy violation requires a stretch of the imagination. 

Steyn cites Hibbert’s claim that his daughter had been “hit in the head by a bolt propelled by the explosion, and that she had been very severely injured,” as well as Eve’s family’s attempt to shield her from media attention [183]. However, the latter does not comport with the lurid accounts of Eve’s injuries by Hibbert in his book, Top of the World: Surviving the Manchester Bombing to Scale Kilimanjaro in a Wheelchair, which was published in April 2024 and serialised in the Daily Mail.

Oakley read out several of those passages during his cross-examination of Hibbert, including:

She [Eve] was just a few metres ahead, just out of reach lying on her front on her left cheek. Her eyes were closed, blood trickled from her gaping mouth as she gasped for breath, a horrifying hole around her right temple exposing brain tissue. [...] She continued to gasp like a fish out of water. [...] I could see Eve’s beautiful torn face.

And:

Eve’s doctors explained that she was still in a coma and desperately poorly with severe head injuries. They also warned us that she would look very different. She had a tracheotomy to help her breathe. [...M]y brave daughter was hooked up to countless machines, tubes and wires keeping her alive [...]

And:

[Eve] was still non-verbal, being fed by a tube, and would require care 24/7 for life. Walking talking and eating would need to be learned all over again.

We might, then, ask who is really responsible for putting confidential medical information about Eve into the public domain (and sensationalising it)? Hibbert conceded the point while under cross-examination:

Mr Oakley: [...] in reality if you put the information out there you have absolutely no control over how people discuss Eve’s condition, or her treatment, or her improvement. You cannot authorise people’s thoughts about Eve, you having put her out into the public domain, can you?

Mr Hibbert: No, I will give you that, yeah, that is fine.

It emerged during the trial that Hibbert’s publication of Eve’s confidential medical information had been done without the consent of Eve’s mother: 

Mr Oakley: [In Hibbert’s book] there is considerable reference to Eve and the difficulties that she faces on a day to day basis, some very private family information. Did he tell you, before he was publishing the book, that he was going to go into this extent of detail? 

Ms Gillbard: No

Given that Gillbard is not only Eve’s mother but also her “litigation friend,” this implies that Eve’s private medical information was made public by Hibbert without Eve’s consent, either. 

“Furtive Filming”

Steyn notes the “furtive way in which Mr Hall obtained video footage of Eve, her mother and carer” [186]. Why does she not use the Ofcom term, “surreptitious”? The Cambridge English Dictionary notes that “furtive” is “(of people) behaving secretly and often dishonestly, or (of actions) done secretly and often dishonestly.” It thus has connotations of dishonesty. In contrast, the same dictionary defines “surreptitious” as “done secretly, without anyone seeing or knowing.” Here, there are no connotations of dishonesty. Thus, Steyn’s use of language is prejudicial. 

The reason why Steyn finds Hall’s filming (from a dashcam that was set up and left to run) is that those filmed “would not have expected to be filmed, and there would have been little risk of them noticing Mr Hall’s camera, still less realising it was rolling and filming them” [186]. But this is true of any surreptitious filming conducted by investigative journalists (think Project Veritas, for example). As Davis notes, “what Hall actually did is called ‘secret-recording’ and is one of the most basic tools of investigative journalism. Legacy media organisations like the BBC do it all the time,” viz. the BBC’s secret recording of vulnerable care home residents to expose institutional negligence and abuse. Whereas the BBC broadcast that footage (blurring out the victims), Hall deleted his footage without broadcasting it and referred to it briefly six months later, not even making any definitive claims regarding who was in it [85].

Thus, Steyn’s assertion that Hall engaged in “furtive filming” [186, 203] amounts to little more than propaganda aimed at encouraging the public to think that Hall was engaged in some kind of illicit spying activity on a “vulnerable young person” [188] — a 16-year-old girl, no less. In reality, Hall was engaging in standard investigative journalistic practice and did nothing wrong.

What Did Hall Tell Gillbard’s Neighbours?

Steyn finds that Hall

spoke to three of [Gillbard’s] neighbours, ascertaining their lack of knowledge that a victim of the Attack was living in their street (paragraph 83 above), thereby disclosing information about Eve that her mother had sought to keep private. [187]

But is this interpretation accurate? Paragraph 83 reads as follows:

In the Book Mr Hall recounted, 

“I decided to knock on neighbours[’] doors to ask if they knew anything about the Manchester incident. I only got a response from three of their neighbours and none of them knew that there was a Manchester ‘victim’ in the street.” 

Similarly, in the Film, Mr Hall said, “I couldn’t find anyone in the street who knew she had been involved.” [83]

As Davis notes, there is no positive evidence here that Hall 

disclosed information about Eve Hibbert to any of Sarah Gillbard’s neighbours, only that he asked what they knew about the Manchester Arena incident. It would have been easy enough for Hall to deduce from their lack of knowledge that no one knew Eve was reportedly involved.

In her second witness statement, Gillbard stated “Now the whole street knows who Eve is and what she was involved in.” Under cross-examination, she claimed the whole street became aware of Eve and her history when Hall “went up and down the street knocking on neighbours’ doors” on September 1, 2019. 

Yet, she herself, in her second witness statement, claimed to have known nothing about Hall until July 2021, when contacted by Greater Manchester Police:

I first heard the Defendant’s name when Martin [Hibbert] had gone to look at images of the night of the attack at Greater Manchester Police, and contacted me to let me know that a police inspector was coming to see me. I think that was around the summer of 2021, but I can’t be sure.

Hibbert, under cross-examination, confirmed that he was unaware of Gillbard and Eve knowing about Hall “even in the broadest sense before the police went round in the summer of 2021” (Oakley’s words).  

So, if the “whole street” knew about Eve and her history on September 1, 2019, then no one living on the street could have said anything to Gillbard about Hall’s visit, during which he spoke to only three neighbours [187]. 

In fact, there is no evidence that the “whole street” knew about Eve and her history as a result of Hall knocking on doors in September 2019. Under cross-examination, Gillbard was unable to identify any neighbours with such knowledge apart from her two next-door neighbours, who are “the only neighbours I speak to.” When asked by Oakley “And do they talk to other neighbours in the street about Eve’s history and condition?,” Gillbard replied “No.” Far from evidencing what the “whole street” knows above Eve, Gillbard stated “I could not really comment on the rest of the street.” 

There is no evidence, either, from Gillbard’s testimony, that “the whole street” became aware of Eve’s history and condition when GMP visited her in July 2021:

Mr Oakley: In or around the summer of 2021, do you know if the police went door to door, warning other neighbours in the street of the situation? 

Miss Gillbard: I have no idea. 

Even if the police had mentioned Eve to Gillbard’s neighbours in July 2021, this would not have been Hall doing so. To emphasise this point, Oakley asked Gillbard “There is no evidence at all that Mr Hall visited the vicinity of your home in the summer of 2021, is there?” To which Gillbard replied “No.”

Therefore, on the basis of the above evidence, it cannot be sustained that Hall breached Eve’s privacy by telling the “whole street” about her history and condition. 

Who are the Real Abusers of Media Freedom?

Whilst there is no evidence that Hall abused media freedom, we do not have to look very far to see who did. As Hall told Davison at the summary judgment hearing,

Mr Hall: Now, during the latter part of 2022, I suffered a litany of harassment and smear campaigns by the BBC which spanned up to mid November 2022. They sent a barrage of 11 emails in which I made it clear I did not want to appear on any BBC programme. They sent a letter making false allegations. They harassed me at my market stall by sending a film crew, after specifically being told not to contact me. They then contacted the local council where I live, who subsequently closed down my market stall, which was selling perfectly legal merchandise. The BBC then contacted YouTube and were instrumental in shutting down my YouTube channel, even though it did not contain any material about Manchester.

They then aired a BBC Panorama programme followed by 11 Radio 4 programmes and wrote articles in which I was the main target of their propaganda. The Claimants or the, or one of the Claimants took part in some of these programmes and articles.

The BBC’s Marianna Spring harassing Hall at his market stall, which was subsequently forced to close. Source: BBC.

The BBC’s behaviour, as described by Hall above, constitutes a course of conduct that was clearly targeted at him. That series of emails and publications, plus tracking him down and springing an interview on him at his own market stall, as well removing part of his modest livelihood and limiting his reach by getting his stall and his YouTube channel (which had 84,000 subscribers and 16 million views [90]) cancelled, should properly be deemed as crossing the boundary from the unreasonable to the oppressive.

I am mimicking Steyn’s language here to make the point that, on the terms of the Judgment itself, it is the BBC, not Hall, that should be found guilty of harassment and of gravely abusing media freedom.

We might also note the role of ITV’s Good Morning Britain, which offered Martin Hibbert an interview while the case was ongoing, allowing him to make a series of false claims about Hall without challenge. As Davis observes, this unfairly jeopardised Hall’s defence and contravened Sections 5 and 7 of the Ofcom Broadcasting Code, prompting viewers to submit complaints.

Thus, it is clear that while the screw is tightening on the independent media, the legacy media can get away with just about anything, safe in the knowledge that the scales of justice only tip one way.

Conclusion

Steyn’s ruling that Hall’s conduct constituted “a negligent, indeed reckless, abuse of media freedom” [181] cannot be sustained. Despite the rhetorical trickery used to make that ruling seem authoritative, not a single element of the supporting evidence withstands scrutiny.

It is telling that the Judgment does not use the phrase “harassment by publication” directly in relation to Hall, even though six of the eight forms of conduct complained of by the claimants involve publications (and another one is inferred from those publications) [11]. Steyn apparently did not want to draw attention to the legal precedent that she was setting. Nevertheless, she has clearly helped to facilitate the future criminalisation of certain types of investigative journalism (i.e., those which question official narratives), something which has more in keeping with totalitarianism than democracy.

Although the bar for abusing media freedom is set extremely high in a country where no media entity has ever previously been found guilty of harassment [162], Steyn spuriously finds that Hall’s “false allegations” regarding the claimants meet the required proof [189]. She caricatures Hall’s methods [100-125, 130] and misleadingly claims that Hall’s Manchester investigation was “for commercial gain” [189].

The Judgment, however, offers no positive evidence that Hall was making “false allegations” [189]; it simply asserts as much, and is reliant on the dubious Summary Judgment for the implied “truth.” In reality, Hall was careful, from the beginning, to claim that he is offering honest opinion in his publications, as opposed to making statements of fact. Despite making repeated assertions and insinuations, the Prosecution did not present any hard evidence that Hall was accusing anyone of lying, nor did it get Hall to admit that he was accusing anyone of lying. Price’s attempt to trap Hall into conceding that a hypothetical scenario in which the claimants were telling the truth would disqualify his claims similarly failed.

Hall pleaded a “public interest” defence as per Ofcom §7.14. This was reasonable, given that, when he undertook his investigation of the Manchester Arena incident in 2018-2019, no official findings had been published regarding what actually took place in the City Room, and that he was uncovering extraordinary evidence that ran counter to the official version of events.

While Hall’s investigative journalism demonstrated fairness and respect for privacy (e.g. no direct contact with Eve, lawful filming from a public highway that was deleted without broadcasting the footage, a brief suspicion reported six months later), Eve’s own father serialised graphic descriptions of her injuries and her medical history in the Daily Mail.

Despite Steyn’s rhetorical attempt to characterise Hall’s 2019 Visit as “furtive filming,” Hall merely made use of a standard technique in investigative journalism, known as secret recording. Unlike the BBC, Hall did not broadcast footage involving vulnerable people.

There is no evidence that Hall told the “whole street” about Eve and her history during his visit on or around September 1, 2019. Nor is there any evidence that the “whole street” became aware of this following GMP’s visit in July 2021.

The real abuse of media freedom in this case relates to the BBC, which, on the Judgment’s own terms, should be found guilty of harassing Hall. ITV was also guilty of prejudicing the trial by allowing Hibbert to make unchallenged, false allegations about Hall live on air.

It should be clear from the above that Hall did not pursue “a negligent, indeed reckless, abuse of media freedom” [181]. On the contrary, he did not violate the principles of media freedom in any way. Rather, he pursued a responsible course of investigative journalism, in the public interest.