Libel / L2
True report about a politician
A journalist accurately reports, with evidence, that a sitting politician is having an extramarital affair. The politician sues for defamation and invasion of privacy.
What we score
What liability does the journalist face for a true report about a public official?
Default assumptions: Unless a vignette says otherwise, the person is a 30-year-old citizen of sound mind with no criminal record, acting alone, on their own behalf and not for profit, in an ordinary residential area. Where subnational units (states, provinces, cantons, Länder) make their own law, each unit is scored and the result is weighted by population. 'The state' includes police, prosecutors, courts, regulators, tax authorities and anyone acting on their orders, including platforms obeying takedown orders.
Score anchors
Both the law score and the practice score use these anchors. Half points are used when a country sits between two of them.
| Score | What it means for this vignette |
|---|---|
| 10 | None. Truth is a complete defence and privacy claims fail for public officials. |
| 8 | The suit is dismissed early; the journalist recovers costs. |
| 6 | The journalist wins but bears substantial legal costs. |
| 4 | Privacy law can make a true report actionable; damages or an injunction are likely. |
| 2 | Criminal liability (criminal defamation where truth is no defence, or a privacy offence): fine or under 1 year. |
| 1 | Criminal liability: 1 to 5 years. |
| 0 | Over 5 years. |
Evidence used: Truth defence; privacy and personality-rights law; public-interest defence; injunction practice; reported cases against journalists.
How each country scores
| Country | Law | Practice | Process | Score | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 9 | 8 | 0 | 8.4 | Truth is a complete defence, and a public official must prove falsity and actual malice (NYT v. Sullivan). Public-disclosure privacy claims fail where the matter is newsworthy, and an official's conduct is newsworthy. The suit will lose, but costs are recovered only where a state anti-SLAPP law with fee-shifting applies, which covers about 40 states and DC. Several federal circuits refuse to apply those laws in diversity cases. |
| New Zealand | 6 | 7 | 0 | 6.6 | Truth is a complete defence to defamation (Defamation Act s8). Hosking v Runting (CA 2004) created a tort of publicising private facts whose disclosure is highly offensive, with a defence of 'legitimate public concern', and said a public figure's reasonable expectation of privacy shrinks as public status grows. A sitting politician's affair is likely to fall within legitimate public concern, so the journalist should win, but only after litigation with partial costs recovery. |
| Netherlands | 5 | 6 | 0 | 5.6 | Truth is not a complete defence in Dutch civil law. A true publication about private life can be unlawful under art. 6:162 BW if, on balance under arts. 8 and 10 ECHR, it serves no public interest; a politician's public role weighs toward publication. For criminal smaad (art. 261 Sr), truth matters only if the public interest required the publication. In practice the journalist usually prevails when the affair bears on the official's role, but the risk of an injunction or rectification order is real. |
| Ireland | 5 | 6 | 0 | 5.6 | Truth is a complete defence to defamation (Defamation Act 2009 s16), and from 1 March 2026 the s26 public-interest defence and the abolition of High Court juries apply. Privacy is protected under the Constitution and the ECHR Act 2003, and Herrity v Associated Newspapers [2008] IEHC 249 awarded damages for publishing an affair, though that story relied on unlawfully obtained phone records. A true, evidenced report about a sitting politician has a strong public-interest case, but the journalist bears costly litigation and some risk of damages. |
| Czechia | 4 | 6 | 0 | 5.2 | Truth defeats defamation (§ 184 requires a false statement), but Civil Code § 86 separately protects private life, and courts balance privacy against press freedom case by case. The Constitutional Court holds that politicians must tolerate more scrutiny (e.g. I. ÚS 2246/12, Paroubková v. Ringier, rejecting a privacy claim). A purely private affair with no link to public office can still lead to an apology order or damages. |
| Germany | 4 | 6 | 0 | 5.2 | German personality-rights law (§§ 823, 1004 BGB with Art. 2 GG) can make even a true report about private life unlawful unless there is a legitimate public interest. Truth alone is no defence for intimate or private matters. The BGH says politicians must accept more scrutiny than other celebrities, and it upheld a report on a state politician's new relationship (VI ZR 26/11). So the journalist will probably win, but only after weighing in litigation, with preliminary injunctions possible. |
| United Kingdom | 4 | 5 | 0 | 4.6 | Truth defeats defamation (Defamation Act 2013 s2), but misuse of private information is a separate tort. In PJS v News Group [2016] UKSC 26 the Supreme Court held that there is no public interest 'in the legal sense' in disclosing private sexual encounters, even infidelity by famous people, and upheld an injunction. A sitting politician has a stronger public-interest argument than a celebrity (hypocrisy, fitness for office), so the journalist usually wins, but only after costly litigation and with real injunction risk. |
| Mexico | 4 | 5.5 | −0.5 | 4.4 | Under the CDMX civil honour law (art. 25), true statements of public interest are not actionable, and officials' honour and privacy are limited by public scrutiny (art. 33). A politician's affair is not clearly 'public interest', though, and privacy and image claims (art. 26) can proceed. Electoral tribunals have sanctioned speech about women politicians as political gender violence, including entry in the offenders' registry and court-ordered apologies. Criminal defamation survives in Nuevo León, Yucatán and Zacatecas (about 7% of the population). |
| Denmark | 2 | 6 | 0 | 4.4 | Truth defeats a defamation claim (§ 269), but § 264 d separately punishes unjustified disclosure of information about another's private life with a fine or up to 6 months (rising to 1 year from 1 January 2027 under the 2026 penal reform). Whether a politician's affair is 'unjustified' depends on public-interest weighing. The journalist would probably win if the affair bears on the politician's office, but must litigate; I found no recent case of a politician suing over an accurate affair report. |
| Singapore | 1 | 6 | 0 | 4.0 | Truth (justification) is a complete defence in civil defamation. Singapore has no general privacy tort, and PDPA claims do not reach a journalist's news activity. Criminal defamation under Penal Code s499 excuses a true statement only if publishing it is 'for the public good' (a question of fact), so a true report can in theory still lead to a conviction (s500, up to 2 years). In practice the journalist would win in court but pay unrecovered legal costs. |
| Switzerland | 2 | 4 | −0.5 | 2.7 | Under Art. 173 para. 3 of the Criminal Code, the accused may not prove truth for statements about private or family life made without public interest, so a true report of an affair can be criminal defamation (monetary penalty). Civil personality-rights claims under Art. 28 Civil Code allow injunctions and damages. Since 1 Jan 2025, Art. 266 Civil Procedure Code allows interim injunctions against media on a 'serious' rather than 'particularly serious' disadvantage. Swiss media rarely run such stories, so the typical risk is a civil injunction or damages, not a conviction. |