Be Careful What you Tweet – A lesson Sally Bercow learnt the hard way!

The ruling issued by the High Court today in the matter of Sally Bercow versus Lord McAlpine strikes a number of critical cords where the issue of online defamation is concerned.

The High Court found that Ms. Bercow tweeting about Lord McAlpine in the wake of the BBC Newsnight program that implicated a Thatcher-era politician as being responsible for sexual abuse of young boys, was libellous. The libellous ‘sting’ being that her tweet, in its ordinary and normal meaning, meant that Lord McAlpine was a ““paedophile who was guilty of sexually abusing boys living in care”.

Ms. Bercow had protested

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