Photo source: Adobe Stock
The case brought by Ovik Mkrtchyan offers a rare look at how opaque ‘pink slime’ websites can give unsupported allegations the appearance and consequences of reported fact.
Businessman and entrepreneur Ovik Mkrtchyan was awarded £105,000 in damages after the High Court found that an article published by The London Post had caused serious harm to his reputation, with wider effects on his business interests and family.
The award, which City AM described as the largest publicly reported payout in a so-called “pink slime” case, followed a remedies hearing before Mr Justice Fordham. The defendants were also ordered to pay Mkrtchyan’s legal costs of £117,663.38 on the indemnity basis.
The dispute arose from an article published in October 2024 that made what the judge called “extremely serious allegations” about Mkrtchyan’s professional conduct and business activities.
Represented by Carter-Ruck, Ovik Mkrtchyan brought proceedings against 2TROM Media Group Ltd, the company behind The London Post, and its director, Viktor Tokarev. At the remedies hearing, the court accepted Mkrtchyan’s unchallenged evidence as establishing the factual basis for the relief sought.
In his judgment, Fordham said the allegations went “to the heart” of Mkrtchyan’s professional life and that the article had formed part of an “apparently coordinated disinformation campaign” directed at him, members of his family and his business associates. It had not been published as an exercise in legitimate and responsible journalism, he found.
The £105,000 award covered both general and aggravated damages. The court also ordered the article to be removed, restrained the defendants from repeating the same or similar allegations and directed them to publish a summary of the judgment on the website.
A publication with real-world consequences
The importance of the ruling in the case of Ovik Mkrtchyan lies not only in the award but in its recognition that reputational attacks can influence decisions far beyond a publisher’s immediate audience.
That finding illustrates how an online allegation can move quickly from the public sphere into the machinery of international business. Banks, lenders and prospective commercial partners routinely review adverse media when assessing clients and counterparties. A damaging report may therefore be treated as a risk indicator before there has been any opportunity to examine its origins or test its accuracy.
The practical consequences can be immediate: enhanced due diligence, internal compliance escalation, delayed financing, stalled negotiations and lost business opportunities. A publisher does not need a mass audience to inflict serious harm. It needs only to make an allegation look sufficiently credible to be noticed by institutions whose decisions matter.
This is where pink slime websites can be particularly effective.
How pink slime publishing works
The term “pink slime” is used for websites that borrow the appearance and authority of established news organisations without providing the editorial safeguards expected of professional journalism. They may adopt the language of a local or national newspaper, publish a steady flow of routine stories and present themselves as conventional newsrooms, while disclosing little about their ownership, funding or editorial decision-making.
Much of the surrounding content may consist of press releases, inexpensive local stories, aggregated material or lightly rewritten reports.
That volume gives the site a history, a recognisable format and the appearance of normal editorial activity. Political advocacy, sponsored material or a targeted reputational attack can then be inserted into the same stream and presented with the visual legitimacy of an independent news report.
The point is not simply that the journalism is poor. The ordinary content provides a wrapper of credibility for material that might otherwise be recognised as advocacy or attack. At the same time, the model is inexpensive to operate and difficult to scrutinise. Articles may carry anonymous or generic bylines, contact details may be limited and ownership structures unclear. When a subject seeks a correction or asks to see the evidence behind an allegation, there may be no functioning newsroom prepared to respond.
The motives vary. Some operators use high volumes of inexpensive content to generate advertising revenue. In other cases, the same machinery is used to place commercial or political attacks into circulation under the guise of independent reporting.
Why the ruling matters
Reputational attacks of this kind are often difficult to challenge. The publisher may be obscure, the author unidentified and the organisation behind the website hard to trace. Even where the allegations are unsupported, the cost and complexity of litigation can leave the subject with no practical remedy.
The judgment does not solve the wider problem of pink slime publishing. It does, however, establish a public record in a field that often depends on opacity. It shows that presenting an allegation in the format of a news report does not place its publisher beyond scrutiny, and that online disinformation can carry financial consequences when those responsible are identified and brought before a court.
For Ovik Mkrtchyan, the ruling provided clear judicial vindication. More broadly, it is a rare example of a pink slime publisher being held accountable for adopting the appearance of journalism without accepting its responsibilities.
