Daily Mail compensates President Trump's wife $2.9 million

Daily Mail specializes in writing about celebrities and rarely apologizes, but recently, this newspaper not only published an apology to Melania Trump but also paid $2.9 million in compensation. Why?

US President Melania Trump's wife - Photo: The Daily Beast

The press reported on April 12 that at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, Daily Mail agreed to pay $2.9 million in compensation and publish an apology to the wife of US President Donald Trump.

Previously, Mrs. Melania filed a lawsuit against the newspaper in courts in London and New York for publishing a defamatory article about her, after a court in Maryland refused to hear the case because it had no jurisdiction.

Mrs. Trump also sought $150 million in damages because the article cost her potential multi-million dollar deals.

Last August, the Daily Mail published an article alleging she had worked as a prostitute. The article was later removed.

In an apology published on April 12, the Daily Mail wrote, “The Daily Mail website and the Daily Mail newspaper published an article on August 20, 2016, about Melania Trump, questioning the nature of her professional modeling work, raising questions about whether she provided services other than modeling. The article said that Mrs. Trump and Mr. Paulo Zampolli, who runs the modeling agency she worked for, denied those allegations.”

“We recognise that the allegations about Mrs Trump were untrue and we have removed the article. We apologise to Mrs Trump for any distress the publication may have caused. In settling two lawsuits brought by Mrs Trump against us, we have agreed to pay damages and costs,” the Daily Mail said.

The American newspaper The Daily Beast commented that this was a rare incident because the Daily Mail rarely apologizes. This newspaper is currently one of the most read English newspapers in the world, with more than 220 million global visits per month.

According to an analysis by The Daily Beast, it is worth noting that British libel laws make it easier for litigants to win than in the United States.

In the US, speech is protected by the First Amendment, and the legal standards of “actual malice” there make some defamation cases difficult to prove. These standards do not exist in the UK.

President Donald Trump himself knows it. “In Britain you have a good chance of winning,” he said. “And negotiations and apologies will be made. Here they don’t have to apologize.”

US President Donald Trump and his wife - Photo: Reuters

“Most of the evidence relevant to the case was found in the US or in Slovenia, where she was born, so there is no better reason for her to file the case in London than to have more advantages in suing in the UK,” said Mark Stephens, a British lawyer specializing in media and defamation law.

He also said there was “almost no chance” of losing a libel case in London.

According to Tuoi Tre