If this sounds like cowardice, consider that the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at Oxford University recently worked out that defamation cases in England and Wales were 140 times more costly than the European average. Newspapers were "shackled", it said. They self-censored because they "no longer had any economic incentive to defend [themselves] against defamation actions in court". 

The inordinate expense would not be so pernicious if there were a level playing field in court. No such playing field exists. Libel is an aberration in English law because it has a reverse burden of proof. Once the claimant establishes that there has been a defamatory statement (an easy test to pass), the onus is on the defendant to prove his or her innocence. Contrary to the principles of the Common Law and natural justice, the odds are stacked against the defendant. I accept that false accusations wreck lives, but overwhelmingly the ones that cause the most damage come from the agents of the state. If, however, the police falsely register you as a potential danger to children, you will almost certainly find that you cannot sue them for a libel which may wreck your career because their assertions are protected from court challenges. Libel is a peculiar law directed mainly at writers and broadcasters.

You may look at filthy headlines in the newsagents and wonder why you should care. Tom Stoppard summed up the gap between the high theory of press freedom and the grubby reality of press practice in his play Night and Day when he had Jacob Milne, an idealistic young reporter, declare, "No matter how imperfect things are, if you've got a free press everything is correctable, and without it everything is concealable."

"I'm with you on the free press," replies Ruth Carson, a rich woman who has been hounded by prurient reporters. "It's the newspapers I can't stand."

As a newspaperman, I could argue that good journalism — whether in tabloids or broadsheets — is far more likely to attract writs than bad journalism, but I want to emphasise instead a point that is hardly ever made: freedom of the press isn't only about freedom for the newspapers Ruth Carson couldn't stand, but freedom for everyone who writes. The internet, which is draining money from traditional media organisations, has created a host of small providers of news and opinion. "Citizen journalists" cannot possibly afford the costs of a libel action. When the wealthy challenge them, bloggers must capitulate or face bankruptcy. I have seen an Iraqi plutocrat, found guilty on corruption charges by a French court, use the threat of libel to "scrub" the web. His solicitors have intimidated tiny and virtually unread websites. When I Google his name now, I struggle to find any site that mentions he is a convicted criminal.

Nothing in English law stops scientists, who must debate without fear of the consequences, being hauled before the judges. A British doctor, who contested whether a pharmaceutical giant's heart treatment was effective, does not face a long argument in peer-reviewed journals but an action in the libel court. Scientists all over the world are astonished that the British Chiropractic Association can sue Simon Singh, a leading science writer, for saying that the alternative therapy does not work. Typically — and here is another of the problems writers face — the leading libel judge Mr Justice Eady has told Singh that he must defend the most extreme meaning of the words he wrote, a meaning he never intended. Instead of having to argue that the alternative medicine is mumbo-jumbo — an argument that would be worth having — Singh must prove that chiropractors know it is mumbo-jumbo but peddle it to a gullible public regardless. Sir David King, the government's former chief scientific adviser, spoke for many when he said that it was "ridiculous that a legal and outdated definition of a word has been used to hinder and discourage scientific debate. We must be able to fairly and reasonably challenge ideas without the fear of legal intimidation."