Anyone who believes in the role of the press as a conduit for rigorous discourse and as watchdog against arbitrary behaviour by public officials will welcome last week's ruling by Britain's highest court, the House of Lords, that brings new interpretation to the defamation laws in the United Kingdom.

Essentially, the law lords, in a case by a Saudi businessman against the European edition of the Wall Street Journal, held that journalists, when they report responsibly on public officials on matters of public interest, are not guilty of defamation if they cannot, in court, prove the specific fact of the allegations.

This decision is of importance to Jamaica, given that it will be highly persuasive on the local courts, which, as we have argued in these columns, have, up to now, been far too restrictive in their application of the defamation laws. Judges, in our view, in their libel rulings, show undue favour to individuals, even those who hold public office, on the misguided assumption of the need to curb the assumed power and influence of the press and the protection of people's privacy and reputation.

The often, and perhaps unintended, result of such rulings is the chilling effect it has on aggressive, but serious and responsible reporting, that places public officials under critical scrutiny and holds them responsible for their actions. The truth becomes not the fact, but only what is absolutely provable in a court of law.

In this U.K. case, Muhammed Abdual Latif Jameel argued that he was libelled because of the Wall Street Journal's report that the United States asked the Saudi Government to place his company under surveillance because, perhaps unwittingly, it might be diverting money to a terrorist organisation.

Mr. Jameel won in the lower courts, where the judges threw out the journal's public interest defence when the newspaper could not bring specific corroboration to support its report.

The good thing is that the Wall Street Journal could afford millions of dollars to fight the case and to win the eventual ruling that brings British defamation law, and in some respects, Jamaica's, closer to what has existed in the United States since Sullivan vs the New York Times, 1964.

The important thing is that public officials can no longer hide reflexively behind the fact that journalists will not be able to prove the truth of the allegation no matter how factual or in the public interest it may be.

As Lord Hale pointed out in his judgement, what is required of the press is serious journalism "and defamation law should encourage rather than discourage it." The important test, as laid out by Lord Hoffman, who wrote the primary judgement, is whether the press "behaved fairly and responsibly in gathering and publishing the information."

While this ruling is important for Jamaica and other Commonwealth countries, this newspaper believes that our own government should use it as a platform from which to advance legislation that would firmly secure people's right to reasonably question the actions of public officials without the fear that the law is being used as a tool of reprisal.

As we argued in these columns recently, public officials, especially those who seek elected office, imply a diminution of privacy and an openness to scrutiny.

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