A House of Lords' ruling in a landmark libel case will help protect journalists from future defamation claims and encourage them to investigate more stories in the public interest, media lawyers have said.



The law lords' ruling overturned previous High Court and Court of Appeal decisions that The Wall Street Journal Europe had libelled Mohammed Jameel, a Saudi businessman, in the course of its investigation into alleged terrorist funding.



The newspaper had reported that the Saudi authorities, at the request of the US, were monitoring the billionaire's bank accounts for evidence that money was being transferred to terrorist organisations. This covert monitoring could not be confirmed and both lower courts found the article to be libellous. The newspaper did not seek to justify the allegations as true.



Lord Hoffman said the article was an example of journalism for which the public interest defence laid down in Reynolds v Times Newspapers Limited and others 1999 UKHL 45 should be applicable. He noted that its thrust was to inform readers, in the public interest, that the Saudis were co-operating with the US and monitoring bank accounts.



Mark Stephens, the partner at Finers Stephens Innocent who advised The Wall Street Journal Europe, said: 'The reaction to this case has been quite astonishing and underlines its importance to the whole question of public interest and the freedom of the press.'



Carter-Ruck partner Andrew Stephenson, who acted for Mr Jameel, said: 'In the so-called "war on terrorism" it doesn't matter whether a defamatory allegation is true or false; it can be published as long as a journalist remains unshaken in his testimony that it has been confirmed to him off the record by a nameless, faceless bureaucrat in Washington.'



Jonathan Rayner