Daily Inspiration Quote by Ian Hislop

Hislop’s line lands like a weary punchline, the kind that’s funny because it’s practically a weather report. The joke is in the reversal: you expect libel lawyers to be the high priests of defamation, thriving on threats and injunctions. Instead, they’re cast as undertakers announcing the death of the very thing they monetized. “There’s no libel any more” isn’t a legal claim so much as a cultural diagnosis: the ecosystem that once enforced reputational consequences has been swamped by volume, speed, and shamelessness.

As editor of Private Eye, Hislop speaks from the front line of British media’s favorite contradiction: a country that loves scandal and also loves suing over it. The subtext is that the old bargain has collapsed. Libel law used to function as a brake on publication and a tool for the powerful to intimidate the press; now the public sphere is so saturated with allegations, insinuations, and click-fed outrage that defamation becomes background noise. If everyone is “accused” daily, the accusation stops cutting.

The cynicism is strategic. Hislop isn’t celebrating a freer press; he’s warning that accountability can die two ways: by censorship, or by meaninglessness. When speech becomes limitless, reputations don’t get defended - they get diluted. The line also quietly needles journalists: if libel’s “given up,” is that because truth is winning, or because nobody cares enough to fight over it?