It feels wrong, as a journalist, to be letting outsiders into this secret, but it is really quite easy to cover things up in England. If you are determined enough it won’t cost you a penny to buy silence. Nor does it even much matter whether you live in this country: our legal system stands ready to help all-comers. It couldn’t be simpler. You hire a solicitor with a working knowledge of Britain’s libel laws to fire off a fierce letter to whichever journalist has been pestering you. It will be the opening salvo in a process which rapidly threatens to become eye-wateringly expensive.
If it’s a local paper that may well be all it takes. Most local editors will admit to having quietly shelved stories or investigations, not because they were wrong, but because the paper simply couldn’t afford the cost of fighting an action. Game over.
Other editors may sit and ponder a bit. They will reflect on how many such actions they have already had to defend — how many hundreds of hours and millions of pounds have gone down the drain. They know the next step: if they publish they can expect your solicitor to send another salvo — this time under a conditional fee arrangement, which will allow him/her to double their hourly charges if they win.
The BBC may prove a slightly harder nut to crack — though there are some spectacular recent examples of the corporation folding like a deck of cards. Some national papers will be inclined to tough it out for a bit. But the potential costs will be accumulating at a frightening rate and, in these straitened times, it takes a bold editor and a supportive owner or shareholders not to blink first, particularly with the reverse burden of proof that is the special affliction of English media organisations.
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