Who is Carole Cadwalladr? Scribe Wins Libel Case Filed By Businessman Aaron Banks

Carole Cadwalladr, a well-known journalist, has won a libel suit filed against her by multi-millionaire Aaron Banks. The freelance journalist who worked for the Guardian and the Observer has triumphed, and this momentous decision might have far-reaching implications for press freedom and investigative journalism.  On Monday morning, Justice Steyn sent her decision via email, and the ruling came at the end of a tumultuous three-year legal battle.

Banks personally sued the journalist twice after she raised doubts about the businessman's ties to the Russian government. She made the remark during a Ted Talk and then followed up with another tweet about it.

Justice Steyn of the High Court dismissed Banks' suit on Monday, saying that Cadwalladr had a "reasonable belief" that her remarks were in the public interest. According to the verdict, Cadwalladr was sharing the link to her talk with her Twitter followers, who "are likely to be people within her own echo chamber and it's presumably right that they wouldn't have thought very much of by that time."

The court determined that the tweet in question did not do "severe harm" to Banks' reputation, but that if it had, she would have judged that Cadwalladr's view that it was in the public interest was similarly reasonable. Cadwalladr's victory is being hailed from all corners of the globe.

Cadwalladr's lawyer, Gavin Millar QC, said in court that the case against her is an attempt to silence her and prevent her from reporting on subjects of public importance. The lawyer brought up issues such as social media messages, personal data, and foreign currency in the context of the European Union referendum. The journalist would have been ordered to pay around one million euros in damages had the businessman won the lawsuit.

Suggested Reading: Journalist Carole Cadwalladr Wins Libel Case Filed By Businessman Aaron Banks

Who is Carole Cadwalladr?

- Carole Jane Cadwalladr was born in Taunton, Somerset, in 1969, and went to Radyr Comprehensive School in Cardiff and Hertford College in Oxford for her education. She is 53 years old now.

- She is a feature writer, investigative journalist, and novelist from the United Kingdom. She previously worked at The Daily Telegraph and also worked as a features writer for The Observer.

- Her first book, The Family Tree, was a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 2006, as well as the Author's Club First Novel Award, the Waverton Good Read Award, and the Wales Book of the Year. On BBC Radio 4, it was also dramatised as a five-part series. It was also a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice in the United States. The Family Tree has been translated into Spanish, Italian, German, Czech, and Portuguese, among other languages.

- For her part in revealing the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, Cadwalladr rose to worldwide notoriety in 2018 as a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, alongside reporters from The New York Times.

- On July 12, 2019, Arron Banks, a multimillionaire, filed a libel suit against Cadwalladr, alleging that she had lied about his "connection with the Russian government," most notably in her TED talk.

- According to reports, seven press freedom organisations banded together to express their displeasure with the action, calling for its dismissal and for the British government to support public-interest journalism.

- Cadwalladr is reportedly a member of All the Citizens, a non-profit organisation incorporated in the United Kingdom.