Panorama’s John Ware accuses website editor of ‘cowardly’ no-show at defamation trial

The BBC journalist John Ware has described pro-Corbyn website editor Paddy French as “cowardly” for failing to attend a libel trial on Monday.

Mr Ware, who presented a BBC Panorama episode in July 2019 entitled Is Labour Antisemitic?, is suing Mr French for £50,000 for accusing him of being a “rogue journalist” who had “engaged in dirty tricks aimed at harming the Labour Party’s chances of winning the General Election.”

The statements appeared on a pamphlet published on Mr French’s Press Gang website and was physically delivered to 100 “senior staff” at the BBC, and 200 individuals employed by the Guardian, Channel 4, LBC, Sky, New Statesman, the Daily Mail, and others.

Mr French also accused the Panorama programme of being “biased”, while showing a “knowingly false presentation of the extent and nature of antisemitism within the party, deliberately ignoring contrary evidence.”

At a preliminary hearing in February last year, Justice Saini found the meaning of the pamphlet’s content to be “clearly defamatory.”

Despite claiming he would “vigorously defend” the pamphlet’s contents, neither Mr French nor a representative attended Monday’s hearing in the Royal Courts of Justice.

Speaking in court on Monday, Mr Ware said, “Paddy French has slithered away, what he has done is cowardly, he's taken refuge in his farmhouse in the south of France,

“He threw down the gauntlet and I was more than happy to accept it. He threw down the gauntlet and, in the end, he didn’t turn up."

Mr Ware also opposed the allegation that he created the programme in order to help the Conservative Party win the General Election.

He noted that he had helped put together the documentary “When Jennifer met Boris”, which “concerned corrupt acts by Johnson” just three weeks before the 2019 General Election, while “Is Labour Antisemitic?” came out six months prior.

Mr French, who had originally planned to defend the case using both truth and public interest defences, withdrew the truth defence in June, before announcing last month his intention to withdraw from defending the case entirely.

In emails sent to the Court in late October, Mr French said that he “will no longer be contesting the claim,” adding, “I have decided to take no further part in these proceedings.”

Mr French’s decision to drop the claim has left Mr Ware feeling “bewildered”, telling the court and Justice Knowles, who presided over Monday’s case, “[French] said he wasn’t going to contest my claim, which has left me in a bit of a no man’s land because if he isn’t contesting it, you would expect him to admit my claim. But he hasn’t, and he hasn’t apologised.”

In Court, Mr Ware’s legal representative William Bennett KC, said, “As far as the defence is concerned, [French’s] claim is not worth him leaving the comfort of his home in France to stand up for what he unrealistically claimed to be “public interest journalism”,

“When the day of reckoning was imminent, when [French] would finally be held accountable for his actions, he cowered in his home in France.”

In addition to the damages, Mr Ware is seeking a permanent injunction against Mr French to prevent him from repeating allegations that Mr Ware behaved dishonestly.

In the October press release announcing his withdrawal, Mr French included the words “I will now concentrate on producing a full report into the Panorama programme. This report will include new material that has yet to see the light of day.”

Mr Bennett KC, said, “[French] has used the press release to create a myth, a false narrative, in order to mask/explain away what he must know will be his defeat at trial and the public revelation that he abandoned his truth defence some time ago – without telling anyone, even those he was actively seeking contributions from on his Crowdfunding website.”

Mr Ware and Mr Bennett KC described Mr French’s press release as a “willingness to wound, yet afraid to strike,” adding it was “an attempt to cheat Mr Ware of vindication by acting as if he was prevented from mounting the defence he wanted to mount.”

Mr Ware attacked Mr French for “masking his cowardice” with his spin, which, he said, had already found traction with pro-Corbyn media outlet The SKwawkbox who “appear to have bought his bogus reasons for not being here today.”

Mr French’s press release also claimed that the Ware V French trial had become “less and less relevant”, which Mr Bennett KC called “insulting given the very serious allegations that [French] chose to make and defend.

“The reality is that the defence has become less and less viable with the abandonment of the truth defence followed by the decision not even to dare to forward the public interest defence at trial.”

Justice Knowles reserved judgement on Monday, saying he would issue a ruling as soon as he could, but remarked, “I readily acknowledge that in the world of journalism, integrity and honesty is of high importance, and if a journalist does not have that in the eyes of the viewer, he has no currency.”

This is Mr Ware’s third defamation case arising from the BBC Panorama. The other two, against the Labour Party and Jewish Voice for Labour, were both settled on Mr Ware’s terms, and resulted in damages and apologies issued to Mr Ware.

Mr French said: "This case raises serious questions about press freedom in Britain.

"I believe I am the first journalist to be sued by a reporter working for the BBC over criticism of a BBC programme he was involved in making. I am pleased that John Ware and his team have acknowledged that I am free to continue examining the Panorama broadcast.

"The full report on this programme — which will be read for libel and take account of any of the judge's comments in this case — will be published next year."

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