Loads of other papers have printed Hayden stories too.
These 2 just happened to go viral. No journalist can predict which ones will do that 🤷♀️
The fact SH was not tagged into the tweet publicising the article should go in the journalist’s favour (as tagging in could be considered unnecessary unsolicited contact, seeing as Hayden had already been contacted prior to publishing).
The now irrefutable fact that none of the published info was ‘defamatory’ surely means that tweeting the article to an audience of one’s followers (see Miller judgement) cannot be reasonably be described as harassment either.
The telephone and email contact will depend on evidence, SH claims that SH was given no ‘right of reply’ but if a journo contacted for more background info and a quote and was greeted with accusations of harassment and no quote given, a) the contact itself was not harassment and b) right of reply was rejected, rather than omitted.
The phone call appears to be a single call, so that in itself is not harassment, it would need to be evidenced that the journalist was behaving in a manner deemed to be unreasonably aggressive for an investigative journalist, so beyond a robust and insistent questioning?
More aggressive than an average Piers Morgan interview? Perhaps the journalist will have a recording?
Then there are emails, which SH claims were unreasonably frequent, although they only occurred on a single date, and if Hayden was replying, creating a long back and forth chain, calling them too frequent would clearly be nonsensical. The manner of those will surely be judged on the written evidence?
Regards to Hayden being treated differently to Scottow, well, that could be the result of the comms. If Kate engaged politely and answered questions and Steph behaved aggressively and refused to answer, for example, then it’s completely understandable that the resulting story would be unbalanced, and Hayden would bear some responsibility for that
Of course, it’s up to Hayden to prove that they were treated differently, and that that difference was due to Hayden’s protected characteristic, which is going to take more than an assertion (unlike a non-crime hate incident).
I think the Mail would be stupid to fold on the harassment claim, unless there is some kind of objective evidence of intentional harassment, ie a recording of the phone call including pejorative insults, and that certainly does not look to be the case.
The article was not defamatory, and it did not assist Kate in the outcome of the criminal trial. No one can reasonably predict which news stories will go viral and tweeting a non-defamatory article into the void does not constitute harassment.