Publishers of non-English language newspapers cannot claim common law qualified privilege on the basis that their readership is limited to a linguistic community with restricted access to English language sources. The [name withheld] extended category of qualified privilege and its reasonableness requirement cannot be decoupled — there is no intermediate category between traditional qualified privilege and the [name withheld] doctrine. Under s 36 of the Defamation Act 2005, a defendant's malice or state of mind cannot be taken into account in assessing aggravated damages unless there is evidence that the malice affected the harm sustained by the plaintiff; however, a refusal to apologise may properly be taken into account as an aggravating factor where the refusal is improper or unjustifiable.
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