The Reynolds v Times Newspapers extended qualified privilege for responsible journalism does not form part of the common law of New South Wales; the Lange framework confines common law qualified privilege to governmental and political information. Under s 22 of the Defamation Act 1974 (NSW), the publication of a serious defamatory imputation on an insufficient factual basis is not rendered reasonable by the publisher's inability to verify the imputation or the unproductiveness of further inquiries. For the s 16 contextual imputation defence, an imputation of mere suspicion of conduct is necessarily less serious than an imputation of having carried out that conduct, so the former cannot prevent the latter from further injuring the plaintiff's reputation.
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