Judgment Approved by the court for handing down. Ismaik v Fadaat Media Mrs Justice Collins Rice : Introduction 1. The Claimant, Mr Ismaik, is a Jordanian businessman of Palestinian heritage. He is Chairman of a UAE group of investment companies which he set up in 2006, and has significant business interests in the UK and Europe. He owns or supports various charitable and humanitarian institutions. 2. The Defendant, Fadaat Media, is a UK company which publishes an international Arabic-language newspaper, Al-Araby Al-Jaheed, with an associated website. 3. Mr Ismaik brings defamation proceedings against Fadaat Media because of two versions of an article it published in Arabic, in the Al-Araby newspaper and on its website, on 21st October 2021. They are almost identical, but the newspaper version omits the last two paragraphs and the accompanying photo of Mr Ismaik. The parties have agreed an English translation of the article. It is annexed to this judgment, in the longer online version. 4. By consent order of Nicklin J of 11 th October 2022, a preliminary issues hearing was listed to determine (a) the ‘natural and ordinary’ meaning of the article; (b) whether, in that meaning, it is defamatory of Mr Ismaik at common law; and (c) whether it amounts to allegations of fact or opinion. This judgment considers and decides those issues. Legal principles 5. I directed myself to the guidance on ‘meaning’ distilled from the authorities and set out in Koutsogiannis v Random House Group [2020] 4 WLR 25, at paragraphs 11 and 12. The guidance of the authorities is of course just that – guidance – intended to simplify not complicate the exercise. And each case turns on its own facts. 6. My task is to “determine the single natural and ordinary meaning of the words complained of, which is the meaning that the hypothetical reasonable reader would understand the words bear”. The governing principle is reasonableness. The intention of the publisher is irrelevant in law: the test focuses on how words are read, not how or why they came to be written. It is objective, not subjective. 7. Natural and ordinary meaning does not rely on the reader having any special knowledge. No evidence beyond the article complained of is admissible as to what it means. So I keep in mind, as guided, the perspective of an ordinary, reasonable reader of a newspaper article, reading it once through in the context in which it appears, and forming an impression of what it conveys on its face. The reasonable reader is neither naïve nor suspicious; is able to read between the lines and pick up an implication; and is allowed a certain amount of loose thinking without being avid for scandal. 8. I am guided away from over-elaborate analysis of text. I need to avoid both literalism, and any strained or forced interpretation. I can and must determine the single meaning I myself consider correct, and am not bound by the meanings advanced by the parties, so long as I do not alight on something more injurious than the claimant's pleaded meaning.