Man you guys are confused. From a Telegraph story on their appeal of the Galloway libel suit:
A high Court judgment ordering The Daily Telegraph to pay MP George Galloway £150,000 in libel damages was so “fundamentally flawed” it would prevent other newspapers publishing important documents in the public interest then commenting on them, the Court of Appeal heard yesterday.
James Price, QC, for The Daily Telegraph, said the newspaper believed it was able to publish authentic documents purporting to show Mr Galloway had accepted substantial payments from Saddam Hussein’s regime through the “Oil for Food” programme, because publication was covered by privilege.
But the judgment by Mr Justice Eady in December ruled that the paper had lost privilege because its coverage also included a “blizzard of interpretation”, or comment.
That meant, said Mr Price, that while “everyone else”, including other newspapers, television channels, even the “person down the pub”, was at liberty to express their views on the documents, the newspaper that published them could not.
The law, as applied by Mr Justice Eady, was such that documents such as the ones found by The Daily Telegraph in the looted and burned-out Iraqi foreign ministry after the fall of Saddam, could only be reported “shorn of any background material or editorials whatsoever”.
It presented a “Catch 22″ situation, said Mr Price, opening the newspaper’s appeal before the Master of the Rolls, Sir Anthony Clarke, Lord Justice Chadwick and Lord Justice Laws.
“The judgment says that privilege was denied because The Daily Telegraph published comment. And it lost the right to comment because the documents were not privileged.”