Journalist’s $18m defamation award slashed substantially

A US court has slashed the $18m awarded to Ghanaian investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas in a defamation case to $500, reports BBC News. Former Ghanaian MP Kennedy Agyapong was ordered to pay the huge sum after a jury found he had defamed Anas by calling him a ‘criminal’, and of being behind the murder of a fellow journalist. Following a request by Agyapong's legal team for the amount to be reduced, a judge in a New Jersey court has ruled that $18m was ‘disproportionate and legally unsustainable’, the former MP said on X. Anas said he would appeal against the ruling, despite his Tiger Eye PI media group previously saying that the case was never about money. The journalist began legal action against Agyapong after the ex-MP made the defamatory remarks following his investigation into football corruption in Ghana and elsewhere. Anas had filed an initial case in Ghana where he lost, with the judge describing his work not as journalism but as ‘investigative terrorism’. He subsequently brought a different case before a court in the US, where Agyapong owns a home and where the ex-MP was when he recorded the defamatory interview on the Daddy Fred Show podcast, according to court papers. Agyapong's lawyers had argued that their client's comments were simply opinions and therefore should not be subject to defamation. However, the eight-panel jury in New Jersey's Essex County Superior Court disagreed, ruling unanimously in Anas' favour in March.