A huge legal win for Drop Site News. Here’s what comes next.They're betting that a reader-funded independent outlet like ours will eventually run out of money and back down. We need to prove them wrong.This is about as satisfying an email as we’ve ever gotten to write to you. In a ruling handed down by the UK High Court, Raffi Berg, the BBC editor who filed a defamation case about an investigation published by Drop Site News, was dealt a major setback. The case is ongoing, but I’d much rather be us than him right now. UK libel laws are quite different from those in the U.S., and Berg did not sue Drop Site directly, since the case would have likely been thrown out immediately in a U.S. court. Instead, he sued the article’s author, Owen Jones, in UK courts and Drop Site defended the case. Or, I should say, Drop Site readers defended the case. We want to offer a massive thank you to everyone who supported, and continues to support, the legal defense—that’s a staggering 4,533 of you who contributed over $265,000. I coincidentally ran into Owen in Cuba on a reporting trip this past weekend, and we wanted to pass on his effusive gratitude to our readers as he faces this ordeal. Our lawyers tell us that after the devastating ruling issued by the High Court, most plaintiffs would drop their case rather than pursue it further and risk having to pay back our legal bills. But here’s what’s wild: this case is not over, and Berg wants to keep fighting. Berg is betting that a reader-funded independent outlet like ours will eventually run out of money and back down. We need to prove him wrong. If you gave before, we’re asking you to give again. If you haven’t yet, now is the time. Will you make a tax-deductible donation today to help us show them they picked the wrong fight? The lead counsel on the other side of this case – the former Director of UK Lawyers for Israel – is racking up our legal costs until the final ruling. Even if we win, which is looking likely, they could appeal. In the end, we expect a total victory, but we have to make it to the end. If Jones does win the case there is a strong chance the claimant will have to pay back all of our legal bills. If he is forced to do so, we will put Raffi Berg’s money toward doing the kind of on-the-ground reporting in Palestine that the BBC should have been doing under his tenure, but has refused. In the end, he may end up contributing to quality reporting after all. Maybe we’ll even name a fellowship after him. If you need a refresher, in December 2024 we published an investigation by British journalist Owen Jones into the BBC’s coverage of the genocide in Gaza, called “The BBC’s Civil War Over Gaza.” He brought us the story because as an independent journalist, he knew he wouldn’t be able to take on the lawsuit that his article might invite, given the fundamentally different approach the UK takes to press freedom and defamation law. There is no First Amendment there. We built Drop Site News to be an institution that produces and publishes rigorous journalism and is unafraid to go up against those forces. To not publish an honest piece of journalism simply due to fear of a lawsuit would raise questions about why we’re even doing what we’re doing. So we told Jones we’d publish the piece and defend him in court if it came to that. That’s what reader-funded journalism looks like. No corporate owner deciding to kill the story. No advertiser pulling the plug. Just readers who believe accountability journalism is worth defending. Will you make a tax-deductible donation to our legal defense fund today? After a thorough edit, an intense fact check, and several rounds of legal vetting, we published the article. And then came the lawsuit. The source, it turned out, was not the BBC itself but an individual editor named Raffi Berg, who’d come in for criticism in the article as the BBC’s online Middle East editor. He was being represented, we soon learned, by Mark Lewis, formerly the director of UK Lawyers for Israel. Berg’s suit claimed that, contrary to our reporting and the informed opinion of our journalist, that he was not in fact biased in his coverage toward Israel. Saying so, he argued, badly tarnished his reputation. We never once considered settling. If a news outlet can’t say that the BBC is biased in favor of Israel after watching their disgraceful coverage unfold, then what can we say? To let you in on how journalism works at this level, news organizations like us carry defamation insurance. It’s not cheap, and it comes with a hefty deductible. In any event, we wracked up pretty huge bills, well into the six-figures by now. But when we launched the fundraiser, 4,533 of you contributed $268,593—with an average donation of $59. We were blown away. Having confidence in your case is one thing. Confidence without the resources for a legal team doesn’t get you very far. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the generosity and support of our readers made this major procedural win possible. And what you did opens up space for press freedom more generally—and will make future subjects of our reporting think twice before coming at us, knowing that we won’t be pushovers. We will fight this. We will defend our journalism. But we can only do so with your support. With gratitude and determination, Ryan Grim
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EXPERIENCE THE JOURNEY OF... KIM, TIM AND MOLLY MYERS AS THEY TRAVEL TO CHINA TO BRING HOME ANNIE!
Thursday, March 26, 2026
A huge legal win for Drop Site News. Here’s what comes next.
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