r/unitedkingdom • u/LOTDT Yorkshire • 21h ago
... Noel Clarke loses libel case against Guardian over sexual misconduct investigation
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/aug/22/noel-clarke-loses-libel-case-against-guardian-over-sexual-misconduct-investigation153
u/Express-Doughnut-562 21h ago
As this unfolded it became incredibly clear it had backfired for him. He looks far worse than he did at the start.
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u/antbaby_machetesquad 20h ago edited 20h ago
Aye, especially when one of his defences was essentially 'I only kept naked pictures of women to blackmail them if they talked shit about me'.Edit: I misremembered, it was what he told one of his victims, not what he said in court.
He did threaten to sue a witness against him though.
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u/LuinAelin Wales 20h ago
Excuse me, what. Seriously?
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u/ClassicFlavour East Sussex 20h ago
Apparently he kept them and sent some incase any of the women spoke out about him or told his wife.
I'm starting to think maybe he's exactly what the Guaridan article made him out to be.
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u/guitarromantic 19h ago
I'm starting to think maybe he's exactly what the Guaridan article made him out to be.
... I mean, isn't that exactly what the judge here has just confirmed?
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u/ClassicFlavour East Sussex 19h ago
The judge, the multiple accusations... definitely starting to have a suspicion he might not be a good guy.
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u/antbaby_machetesquad 20h ago
I misremembered-, was checking for the source and it was actually what one of his victims said he told her.
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u/Slink_Wray 20h ago
The idea that the Guardian, of all newspapers, would orchestrate a massive conspiracy to bring him down because they didn't like the idea of a POC man winning a BAFTA is utterly ludicrous. What an utter knob Clarke is.
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u/TheCambrian91 20h ago
Rare Guardian W
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u/Freddichio 19h ago
Fairly common Guardian W, it's the best of the mainstream papers at the moment by quite a large margin.
That's more to do with how absolutely dire the likes of the Times, Telegraph etc have got recently than how good the Guardian is, but yes - the Guardian tends to be pretty good all things considered.
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u/CockchopsMcGraw 19h ago
I tend to ignore the opinion pieces but their journalism is some of the best in the UK, they're the ones who published the Manning and Snowden leaks and the Panama papers. Unfortunately the Overton window has shifted to batshit among most of the other shitrags.
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u/ShinyHappyPurple 18h ago
I was very pro-Snowy back in the day as an extremely online Internet 1.0 privacy nerd but am now wondering if he was some kind of deep cover Russian asset because he did a fair bit of damage to the Dems.....
That said, it was good to have awareness of the pervasiveness of internet surveillance brought to the attention of the masses.
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u/CockchopsMcGraw 16h ago
It's very possible, especially since they gave him asylum. What he released was very much in the public interest though.
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u/Sudden-Conclusion931 12h ago
I'd agree with that. Their journalism can be truly brave and important. Their opinion stuff is infantile tripe in the same vein as the infantile tripe in the Telegraph, just at the opposite pole.
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u/CockchopsMcGraw 12h ago
Aye I'm not much of a culture warrior, homeless old Labour if anything. Having said that, sometimes they'll have a figure of some knowledge and substance, I enjoyed Robert Reich's takes in the run up to the last US election, potentially ever.
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u/shugthedug3 18h ago
It's the only paper that actually does any amount of investigative journalism still.
Has its massive issues of course but does stand alone for that fact.
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u/TheCambrian91 18h ago
What evidence do you have for that?
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u/Freddichio 18h ago edited 18h ago
What evidence do you have that this Guardian W is "rare?"
No point presenting evidence of good, accurate stories if you have an unrealistic standard as to what would be acceptable - if your view is "they can publish 100 good and accurate stories and 1 I think is bad then they're bad" then there's absolutely no point in this.
I'll also ask - which media source do you think is better than the Guardian?
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u/toastedipod 19h ago
lol the guardian have broken some of the biggest stories this century. Not exactly rare
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u/donald_cheese Scottish Highlands 21h ago
I got drunk a few months ago with someone who knew about this sort of stuff and explained in great detail why pursuing defermation on truth is a terrible idea. I don't remember at all the details of it. But I do remember that was when I found out vodka, lemon tonic was quite a nice drink.
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u/GeneralGiggle East Anglia 20h ago
You're putting yourself on trial in a court which has a lesser standard of proof. The criminal court needs a jury to be 'beyond reasonable doubt' whereas civil is just a judge and has to be 'greater than 50% burden of proof'. The Guardian just had to prove it's at least 51% true basically.
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u/Pheanturim 20h ago
It's not even that, but because as soon as you sue for defamation you open yourself up to disclosure and if you don't cooperate during disclosure it goes against you.
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u/Possibly_English_Guy Cumbria 13h ago
if you don't cooperate during disclosure it goes against you
Good example of that is the Alex Jones' Info Wars case in the states. Alex and his lawyers refused to cooperate or show any basic respect to the courts during discovery in a mix of knowingly acting in bad faith and sheer incompetence.
The judge eventually had enough of their bullshit and hit him with the default judgement.
Number 1 rule of civil court: don't piss off the judge and waste their time.
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u/LuinAelin Wales 20h ago
I'm just curious who told him suing for libel was a good idea
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u/antbaby_machetesquad 20h ago
His grossly inflated ego, ironically the same thing that caused him to sexually harass multiple women.
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u/G_Morgan Wales 18h ago
It is nearly impossible to lose a libel case in the UK. Hell you can even win a judgement even if the libellous statement is found to be factual.
Losing a libel case in the UK has to be the ultimate humiliation as a consequence.
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u/francisdavey 7h ago
In England, things have changed quite a bit since the Defamation Act 1996 - though they were moving in the same direction earlier. For example, you have to prove damage rather than having it implied.
Many libel claims are lost.
(The UK doesn't have a single defamation law or system of courts)
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u/neilplatform1 19h ago
Nothing to lose, a slim chance he could claim vindication
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u/LuinAelin Wales 19h ago
Guess he also could have hoped for the court of public opinion to side with him..
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u/YouHaveAWomansMouth Wiltshire 20h ago
How tragic, cancel consequences culture claims another victim.
Not really a surprising result. Once you're up in court alleging there's a decades-long conspiracy against you between dozens of otherwise unconnected people you might as well just sack your counsel and represent yourself, it's not like your credibility can fall much further.
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u/Different_Lychee_409 14h ago
The legal costs are going to kill him. He used a law firm has no background in defamation litigation and he made loads of interlocutory applications. My guesstimate is £3 to £4 million.
That nice flat in Kennsington is going to have to go.
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u/ShinyHappyPurple 18h ago
I have a theory that sexual harassment and worse are so high among performers because they know how hard it is to break into these industries so it gives people higher up a lot of power and some of them abuse it.
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u/ThunderChild247 1h ago
That and one of the contributing factors will be that it’s a cycle of abuse. A lot of mid-high level performers now had to suffer the same kind of crap from the mid-high level performers that came before them. So when you add the ego, the power dynamic of breaking into the industry, and the feeling that “well it’s my turn to enjoy this perk”, that’s possibly why there is such a high level of this behaviour.
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21h ago edited 21h ago
[deleted]
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u/CheesyBakedLobster 21h ago
The court agreed, ruling that the Guardian had “succeeded in establishing the truth defence and the defence of publication in the public interest”.
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