On 7 July 2026, Mr Justice Nicklin handed down judgment following the lengthy trial of the misuse of private information and breach of confidence claims brought by seven Claimants against Associated Newspapers Limited (“Associated”), the publisher of the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and MailOnline; Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon OBE & Ors v Associated Newspapers Limited [2026] EWHC 1637 (KB).

Nicklin J found that each of the claimants had failed to prove their pleaded allegations of unlawful information gathering (“UIG”) against Associated.  He rejected the attempt to prove the claims by broad inference where there remained a legitimate and realistic possible lawful source pathway, or where the article-specific evidence did not prove that the relevant information must have been obtained unlawfully.  The Judge considered 57 articles which the claimants contended were the product of UIG and rejected their contentions. A summary of the judgment is available here [pdf].

Associated’s statement welcoming the judgment can be read here.  Prince Harry and Baroness Lawrence issued an unusually strong statement [pdf] in which they described the judgment as a “complete and obvious whitewash“. The Press Gazette, Guardian, BBC, Independent, CNN, Newsweek, and Reuters are some of the many outlets to cover the decision.  A hearing to deal with costs, permission to appeal and related matters will take place before Nicklin J on 29–30 July 2026.

It was announced on Thursday 9 July 2026 that Sir Mark Warby, former Judge in Charge of the Media and Communications List, and leading practitioner at the media bar, has been appointed as President of the King’s Bench Division following the retirement of Dame Victoria Sharp (another former media practitioner).  Sir Mark was appointed as a High Court Judge in 2014 and was instrumental in the establishment of the new Media and Communications List in 2019.    He was appointed to the Court of Appeal in 2020.

Internet and Social Media

On 10 July 2026, Ofcom published its long-awaited register of categorised services and list of emerging Category 1 services under the Online Safety Act 2023, a year later than originally planned. Publication of the register triggers the additional duties regime, and Ofcom launched two substantial consultations alongside it (Giving users more choice, control and trust in their online experience and Fraudulent Advertising Codes of Practice) both closing at 5pm on 2 October 2026. The additional risk assessment duties bite on publication of the register: Ofcom expects Category 1 and 2A providers to supply copies of their latest risk assessment records by October 2026, and to publish summaries of their findings by November 2026. Ofcom’s statutory report on age assurance is still expected by the end of July.

On 9 July 2026, Ofcom opened a further enforcement investigation, into whether Bit Hive has failed to comply with its duties to prevent children encountering pornographic content through highly effective age assurance, and with its children’s access assessment duties. Its existing investigations into the providers of kemono.cr and fapello.com were also updated the same day.

Data Privacy and Data Protection

On 8 July 2026, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology Liz Kendall told the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee that she was “absolutely appalled” at the findings of sexual harassment and bullying made by the independent investigation at the ICO against former Information Commissioner John Edwards. The nature of the complaints against Edwards had not previously been publicly reported. Kendall announced an independent review of the culture, accountability and governance of the ICO, adding that the women who had spoken up had been incredibly brave. She also told the Committee that Edwards is “preparing to serve legal papers” on one of the women at the ICO who raised concerns, and that the Government will begin recruiting a new chair and appoint new directors. The Guardian, The Record and MLex have more information.

Artificial Intelligence

On 7 July 2026, the European Commission presented an Action Plan on Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence aimed at supporting the safe and responsible use of AI while strengthening cyber resilience across the European Union. The Action Plan reflects the European Commission’s view that advanced AI models can improve vulnerability detection, incident response and infrastructure protection, but also can be misused to identify weaknesses, automate attacks and increase the speed and scale of cyber incidents. The Privacy and Cybersecurity Law Blog has more information here.

Privacy International has published its findings following its trial of two AI recruitment platforms in February to investigate the impact of algorithms being embedded into the recruitment process, and what the transparency and fairness implications may be for candidates. PI explains how their findings raise serious questions about the reliability of AI tools for assisting recruitment decision-making, and about the fairness of recruitment processes where consequential decisions are delegated to black box systems.

Art, Music and Copyright

A second Press Gazette story about Clickout Media was removed from Google search results following a spurious copyright complaint filed under the US DMCA by an entity calling itself DRF Corp, which claimed the outlet had copied its content word for word even though the content allegedly copied was on an unrelated subject. The story has since been reinstated.

Surveillance

Facial recognition technology in shops will soon alert police in real time to the presence of serious offenders, with civil liberties groups warning of a “dangerous escalation” towards surveillance and criminalisation in the retail sector. Facewatch, a facial recognition system used by more than 100 businesses including Sainsbury’s, B&M and Spar to monitor thieves, said it was launching a UK-first feature to “alert police instantly when the most serious offenders trigger a live facial recognition match”. The Guardian has more information here.

Newspapers Journalism and Regulation

Publishers have been urged to experiment with AI controls in the aftermath of the UK competition watchdog’s new rules for Google. Senior publishing leaders were told it would be a “travesty” if none of them made the most of the ability to opt out of their content appearing in AI Overviews and AI Mode, as prompted by the Competition and Markets Authority’s publisher conduct requirements for Google search. The Press Gazette has more information here.

Inforrm this week republished How the British press has undermined the ECHR over many years: new study by Ekaterina Balabanova (Liverpool) and Gemma Horton (Sheffield). The authors present the first systematic analysis of how British press coverage has supported or undermined the legitimacy of the ECHR over 25 years, and conclude that the Daily Mail was the paper that most undermined the legitimacy of the Convention, with coverage regularly suggesting it is responsible for a perceived loss of national decision-making power. The timing, in the week of the Lawrence judgment, is not without irony.

IPSO

Statements in Open Court and Apologies

On 7 July 2026, a joint statement (pdf) was read in the High Court concluding the libel proceedings brought by Tanzanian politician January Makamba against political activist Didier Mlawa. Mr Makamba sued Mr Mlawa for the publication of 33 posts on X accusing Mr Makamba of various serious criminal offences including murdering and conspiring to murder his critics and political opponents, amassing unexplained wealth through corruption, working against the national interests of Tanzanians by seeking to undermine the work of the Tanzanian Government, and attempting to procure the murder of Mr Mlawa. As part of the settlement, Mr Mlawa acknowledged the allegations were incorrect and undertook not to repeat them. Brett Wilson has more information here.

New Issued Cases

There were no new claims issued in the Media and Communications List this week.

Last Week in the Courts

As mentioned above, on 7 July 2026, Mr Justice Nicklin handed down judgment in Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon OBE & Ors v Associated Newspapers Limited [2026] EWHC 1637 (KB).

On the same day, Mr Justice Griffiths delivered judgment on meaning in the defamation action of Ameyaw v Anthony [2026] EWHC 1694 (KB). The claimant is a youth minister who for a number of years served as Youth Minister at Edmonton Baptist Church. The defendant is a member of that church. The claim relates to an email sent to three recipients. Griffiths J held the email to have the following meaning: “The claimant, in his capacity as the Youth Minister of the Edmonton Baptist Church, has engaged in unethical and self-serving conduct by (a) being physically present on church premises for only a few hours per week; (b) spending most of his contracted working hours on undeclared private filming activity, to the detriment of the youth associated with the Church; (c) coercing the former Lead Minister into purchasing expensive media equipment and (d) carrying out very little of the duties listed in his job description. He threatens legal action when he does not get his own way” [46]. The statements were statements of fact [69] and are defamatory at common law [47].

Also on the same day, there was a hearing in the libel case of Makamba v Mlawa KB-2024-001062, and a hearing in the libel case of Beckett v Graham & anr KB-2024-004120.

On Wednesday and Thursday 8 and 9 July 2026, there was a hearing in the case of Garrett v Schestowitz KB-2024-001270.

On 10 July 2026, Mr Justice Linden delivered judgment in the libel, misuse of private information, breach of UK GDPR/Data Protection Act 2018 and harassment claim of Kaur v Fox [2026] EWHC 1743 (KB). The claims arise from Mr Fox’s publication in April 2024 of an upskirting photograph of the claimant, in respect of which he is being prosecuted under section 66A of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 on two counts of sharing indecent images, with trial listed for December 2027. The great majority of the meanings were held to be defamatory, the recurring sting being an attack on the claimant’s integrity and sincerity — that she was projecting a false public image of herself as a victim and had deleted her OnlyFans account to conceal the truth [62], [71], [77]. Five of the eighteen publications complained of were held not to be defamatory of the broadcaster because they did not refer to her at all in their natural and ordinary meaning [104, 123, 126, 129]. Ms Kaur’s application for delivery up of an upskirted photograph of her was refused because of the “unsatisfactory” way the claim was pleaded in assuming that an MPI claim was made out because of the intimate nature of the photograph. Linden J did not accept that it was unnecessary for Ms Kaur to plead her case on these matters in circumstances where the Photograph appears to have been taken in a public place and where the Defendant’s position (at least in the Publications considered above) is that it was taken by agreement between the Claimant and the photographer and for the purposes of publication to the general public [165]. Linden J held that section 10 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 applied to the sought disclosure of who had supplied the photograph and rejected the argument that section 10 protects journalistic sources only [168(ii)]. The defendant’s application to strike out the misuse of private information and data protection claims was adjourned pending amended Particulars of Claim.

Media Law in Other Jurisdictions

Australia

Reuters reports that Australia’s online platforms are stumbling at the very first step in implementing age checks for users, rendering the world-first teen social media ban ineffective. A team of software testers, which last year trialled age-assurance software on more than ​1,000 Australians, found that platforms did not ask for age proof on any of the 50 accounts it opened after the law came into force and on which it declared ​the age as 16.

Australia’s copyright framework has become the focus of renewed debate as technology companies lobby for broader rights to use copyrighted material to train AI models. The discussion comes as the Australian Government continues considering its approach to AI regulation and copyright reform. The Australian has more information here.

European Union

The European Parliament has voted to bring back a rule giving big tech permission to scan users’ messages to hunt for child sexual abuse material (CSAM), a process that critics call Chat Control. The law allowing the voluntary scanning, which dates to 2021, expired in April after Parliament could not come to agreement about how to move forward amid a privacy outcry. Some lawmakers and other officials, including Parliament President Roberta Metsola, had urgently prioritized renewing the rule (which doesn’t allow scanning on encrypted platforms like Signal). The Record has more information here.

United States

On 9 July 2026, a group of news publishers led by the New York Times and the New York Daily News filed a sanctions motion against OpenAI in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. The newspapers told the court that OpenAI had falsely represented that it could not search its large language models for their copyrighted material, while concealing that it had done so even before the first news plaintiff sued, and that it had deleted billions of relevant ChatGPT conversations or made them unsearchable. The remedies sought include a bar on OpenAI relying on a 20-million-conversation ChatGPT sample, a finding that the logs would have shown substantial and systematic reproduction of the publishers’ works, attorneys’ fees, and jury instructions reflecting the alleged destruction of evidence. The plaintiffs say an April deposition of an OpenAI data privacy engineer revealed that the company had already conducted internal searches of its training corpus for copyrighted journalism. OpenAI denied the allegations, its spokesperson saying the Times was persisting in efforts to invade the privacy of people with nothing to do with the case. Al Jazeera, TechCrunch and the Washington Times have more information.

Research and Resources

Next Week in the Courts 

On Monday 13 July 2026 there will be a statement in  open court in the case of Davies v Weston KB-2026-000973 before Fordham J.

The part heard contempt application in the case of Garrett v Schestowitz and another KB-2024-001270 will continue before the same judge.

Reserved Judgments

Vince v Associated Newspapers, heard 24 June 2026 (Vos MR, Warby and Whipple LJJ)

Bridgen v Hancock, heard 20 May 2026 (King, Warby and Whipple LJJ)

This Round up was prepared by Colette Allen,  the host of Newscast on Dr Thomas Bennett and Professor Paul Wragg’s The Media Law Podcast (@medialawpodcast.bsky.social).