Tom Watson legally vindicated over Iain Dale article in Daily Mail
Tom Watson hinted when his name was mentioned in connection with the controversy over Damian MacBride blew up that he might be wanting a lawyer. In the end it was Carter-Ruck not Schillings.
He took action for defamation against the Daily Mail over an article by Iain Dale, and he has won:
Associated Newspapers Limited, the publisher of the Mail on Sunday and the Daily Mail, apologised today to Tom Watson MP in a Statement in Open Court read before Mr Justice Eady.
Mr Watson complained of an article by Iain Dale, headed “Smears, glowering henchmen-like the Nixon White House” published in the Mail on Sunday on 12 April 2009 in which it was stated not only that Mr Watson was copied into emails sent by Downing Street press adviser Damian McBride to Derek Draper, but that he “encouraged” them. The emails were reported to have made serious and false allegations about the private lives of a number of Conservative Party MPs in the course of discussing proposals for a new website to be known as “Red Rag”.
As the Court heard today, Associated Newspapers Limited now accepts that these allegations are entirely untrue. In fact, Mr Watson was not copied into any of the emails exchanged between Mr McBride and Mr Draper. As Mr Watson has already publicly made clear, he had no involvement in or knowledge of the “Red Rag” website and he did not condone the content of the emails and, indeed, regarded them as completely inappropriate.
Associated Newspapers Limited has unreservedly withdrawn the allegations, apologised to Mr Watson for the distress the article caused him and his family and has joined in the reading of the Statement in Open Court today. In addition, Associated Newspapers Limited has agreed to pay Mr Watson substantial damages, together with his legal costs.
Congratulations to Tom, and Iain got this one wrong.
[Update 20/5/09 8:15pm. A couple of further notes on this:
1 - Cris Hawes in the comments refers to an apology from Iain Dale on the same day ...
2 - Which Sunny , Justin and Tim not willing to accept as fulsome.
I'll return to this if Tom Watson says anything himself, but I'm guessing that he has decided to move on, so so will I.]
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To be fair to Iain, he did issue an apology right away – and had attempted to have the piece modified.
Chris´s last blog post..What qualities does a Speaker need?
Chris Hawes has fallen victim to a false claim by Iain Dale.
The fact is, Iain did not apologise immediately, it took the involvement of lawyers to get him to even admit to being wrong, and he later implied* that by using lawyers Tom had something to hide.
(*Paul Staines, the most likely source of this false allegation, did the same.)
Also, while Iain may have withdrawn the allegation from his site rather quickly, it made it to print and was widely repeated, and for over two days he allowed the majority of his readers to continue thinking that Tom had been CCed on those emails. By his own admission, he only brought people up to speed if they emailed him and asked about it.
This afternoon, he responded to someone asking about this press release by referring them to an earlier statement that again without evidence alleged Tom Watson’s direct involvement in the ’smeargate’ emails.
Tim Ireland´s last blog post..Iain Dale tells lies about his political enemies
I have copies of several instances saved to my hard drive of people referring to Tom Watson as being CCed on those emails in comments on Iain’s own damn site and Iain NOT correcting them immediately, prominently, and/or publicly.
(And he was keeping a very close eye on comments at that time, as he was busy deleting mine.)
There is even one instance where one such comment has later been deleted by the author themselves, suggesting that Iain has corrected them quietly behind the scenes.
This has all the elements of a classic Dale episode, right down his being too precious to admit error or defeat.
I trust others will think twice before participating in his self-serving poll of weblogs this year; this goes beyond a simple error and the wider episode shows that Iain is not a blogger to be trusted.
Tim Ireland´s last blog post..Iain Dale tells lies about his political enemies
Iain repeated same or similar on TV – BBC N24 I think – and Nadine Dorries Mp was repeatedly saying the same thing, at every opportunity; also pretty much claiming Gordon Brown knew the content of McBride’s outbox and was putting him up to it …
But hey, Nadine’s in enough trouble as it is. Her “main home” is imaginary, or at least it’s her “second home” by the look of it …
Iain also defamed McBride and Draper (!) of course, claiming that plans to publish their vile shitting had not been shelved even as recently as a week or two before the story broke.
Utterly wrong.
Chris Paul´s last blog post..Poll: Speaker Martin Retires, Effective From Which Date or Event?
Allow me to quickly back up what Chris has just said with a brand new post that includes a transcript of some of Dorries’ claims on SKY News:
http://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2009/05/smeargate_dorries.asp
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