c. 64) was an act passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, clarifying and "amplifying" the defence of qualified privilege (and potentially a degree of absolute privilege, though this was not made clear in the statute itself[1]) in cases involving the verbatim reproduction of court proceedings, the minutes of select committees, police notices or various other specifically recognised kinds of meetings, which had, in vaguer terms, been laid out in the Newspaper Libel and Registration Act 1881.

[2] The Act itself was lobbied for by the Provincial Newspapers Group; it was taken up by eight Members of Parliament with direct connections to the press,[2] among them Sir Algernon Borthwick, Sir Albert Rollit, Harry Lawson, Louis Jennings, Charles Cameron, and John Morley.

[4] Specifically, section 3 of the 1888 clarified that a newspaper proprietor could not be found liable for a "fair and accurate report" of court proceedings, although whether this amounted to qualified or absolute privilege was not made clear at the time.

[1] Section 4, building on the vaguer language of the 1881 Act, gave an enumerated list of cases when the defence of qualified privilege could now be used, including "any meeting of a vestry, town council, school board, board of guardians, board or local authority formed or constituted under the provisions of any Act of Parliament, or of any committee appointed by any of the above-mentioned bodies".

[4] An additional requirement placed upon proprietors wishing to claim immunity was that they be responsive to demands for a printed correction or the error in subsequent issues of the newspaper, the definition of which was inherited from the 1881 Act.