The resolve displayed by Carole Cadwalladr in her successful defence against a libel action brought by Arron Banks calls to mind Hemingway’s definition of courage as “grace under pressure”. For years, this award-winning journalist had been investigating the role of social media in our democracy and the role that Facebook in particular had played in the Brexit referendum. Since Banks was a leading figure in – and a substantial donor to – the leave campaign, she had inevitably become interested in his finances, and in a Ted Talk in April 2019 referred briefly to him in 24 words and later said something similar in a tweet.
The context for the remark was that the Times, the Observer and other news outlets had been reporting how Mr Banks had, as one lawyer put it, “misled everyone about the number, and nature, of his covert meetings with Russian officials”.
