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A High Court judge has determined that certain statements made by Essex Police regarding journalist Allison Pearson, who writes for the Daily Telegraph, might be defamatory. Pearson expressed that she was left “dumbstruck” by the incident, which involved the police publishing a series of press releases outlining their version of events.
The judge, Mr Justice Chamberlain, specifically identified two statements from Essex Police, along with subsequent remarks by Roger Hirst—the county’s Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner—as potentially defamatory. These comments were connected to an investigation sparked by a now-deleted post on the social media platform X. Pearson initiated legal proceedings against both Essex Police and Hirst, asserting that the remarks referred to her and damaged her reputation.
The controversy arose after police officers visited Pearson on Remembrance Sunday in 2024 to invite her for an interview under caution, concerning allegations of inciting racial hatred. The episode drew significant media attention, with some outlets criticizing the practice of probing and recording so-called non-crime hate incidents. Essex Police responded by stating that officers had visited “an address in Essex and invited a woman to come to a voluntary interview.” Meanwhile, Hirst publicly discussed the matter in an article on the Conservative Home website and during a radio interview on LBC.
During the High Court hearing, the judge examined the “natural and ordinary meaning” of the disputed statements. He ruled in a preliminary judgment that parts of Essex Police’s statement were potentially defamatory, as they implied Pearson’s guilt by mentioning that officers visited following “a complaint of a possible criminal offence.” Pearson’s legal representative argued that the police had reviewed the post online before their visit and thus had grounds to suspect a criminal act. The judge also noted that whether the statements, which did not explicitly name Pearson, would be understood as referring to her would need to be decided at trial. Furthermore, he found that Hirst’s comments on LBC, as well as his article, could also be defamatory since they suggested reasonable grounds existed to investigate Pearson for inciting racial hatred
Read the full article from The BBC here: Read More
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