Standing up for public interest: Legendary Fry and others

Authors call on party leaders to save libel reform | Law | The Guardian: "Some of the Britain's most acclaimed authors and playwrights including Stephen Fry, Sir Tom Stoppard, William Boyd, Margaret Drabble, Ian McEwan and Sir Salman Rushdie have called on the main party leaders to honour their pledge and implement a defamation bill aimed at transforming 170-year-old laws they say have silenced scientists and authors as well as journalists and activists.

In an open letter, the authors tell David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband they are "deeply concerned" that the bill is going to be killed off after three years going through the legislative process simply because it had become entangled in a political row over the Leveson report on press regulation in the past month.

They said it was "entirely inappropriate, and even reckless, for libel reform to be sacrificed to the current political stalemate" in the letter, organised by the writers' lobby group English Pen."
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The authors say that a number of scientists have faced "ruinous libel suits simply for blowing the whistle on dangerous medical practices" in the past three years . If the defamation bill became law, the risk of libel action would be lessened because of a new public interest defence. Big corporations such as drugs companies would also have to prove serious financial harm before they could take action.

"If the law is not reformed, bullies will continue to be able to prevent the publication of stories that are often not only in the public interest, but a matter of public health and safety," the letter says.

Other signatories are Lisa Appignanesi, Jake Arnott, Amanda Craig, Victoria Glendinning, Mark Haddon, Ronald Harwood, Michael Holroyd, Howard Jacobson, Hisham Matar, Philippe Sands, Will Self, Kamila Shamsie and Raleigh Trevelyan.