Mail claims human rights

European court to rule tomorrow on newspaper’s free speech complaints

The publishers of the Daily Mail — a newspaper not known for supporting the human rights convention — have told the European court that their human rights have been breached.

Associated Newspapers are hoping that the human rights court will rule in their favour when it gives judgment tomorrow on a complaint they lodged against the UK government in 2021. Most cases at the Strasbourg court are decided without an oral hearing.

The publishers say their right to freedom of expression, protected by article 10 of the human rights convention, was breached when they were required to pay extensive claimants’ costs in two high-profile court cases arising from reports they had published.

Left: Part of un unrelated front-page report from 2017. IPSO, the independent press regulator, found that this story “seriously misrepresented the basis of the judgment reported” and ordered a front-page correction notice. Right: the European Court of Human Rights

They took the United Kingdom to court on the basis that that successive British governments have undertaken to secure everyone’s human rights, as set out in the convention signed by the UK in 1950.