This is a good article on the history of the issue: https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/941/criminal-libel
Edit: added the [].
In the US, the burden of proof is on the person suing for libel; they have to prove that what was said is false.
So in the UK, yes truth is a defense... but you can still be telling the truth and unable to prove it, which makes it not much help.
There are two clearly distinct legal traditions: the common law in the anglo countries and civil law in the rest. Also USA and UK seem to have very different and each of them unique treatment in this matter.
So it's not a question of first world countries vs the rest. It's more of a USA vs UK vs the rest of democratic countries, not sure where other Commonwealth countries fall.
Edit: I feel I wasn't clear. Civil law countries mostly adhere to ancient legal doctrine, some coming from Roman Empire, some from middle ages tradition, some from Bonaparte, some from German theoreticians. This corpus is pretty consistent, grown through statutes, while common law tend to develop idiosyncratic variants following practice in every country.
On the matter of defamation the US is quite different from everywhere else though, because of the 1st amendment, and the 'actual malice' standards applied to 'public figures' in defamation cases. The confounding factors in the EU are the privacy clauses in the European Convention on Human Rights, so you see cases that would be related to defamation elsewhere being litigated on privacy in the EU.
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In the US, the publication of private matters is a separate tort, invasion of privacy. For IOP, truth is not a defense.
Or another way of looking at it: libel is a narrower tort in the US than it is in the rest of the world.
Some European countries do have quite strict privacy laws, so a newspaper which obtained the material in a questionable way might have to be cautious (see the News International hacking scandal, for instance).
What case was this? Are you sure you're not talking about the Max Mosley (the former racing driver/FIA boss) case against News Group? Because that was a breach of privacy case, not a defamation one.
It was a huge deal for a few weeks, and then it disappeared. I only remember it because my Torts professor brought it up in class during the defamation lecture as an example of the differences between US and UK defamation law.
Also, what does the cold war alignment have to do with this?
However, the meanings of these have changed from political designations to economic designationms.
Economically, american citizens have much lower access to basic social services and we let people die on the street with vacant housing in the neighborhood. Does that make us second world or third world?
At least local journalists are waking up to how bad it is with the wealthy suddenly throwing their weight around and taking every paper in the nation to court over a few words.
A terrible import from the UK. Despite all the nastiness and bad words, protected free speech is what the US really did get right.
All laws can be used in a multitude of unintended ways, something lawmakers never really consider.
Suppose you know a person who committed a crime and be punished years ago and there is no immediate threat of doing it again, revealing that fact is a defamation, unless a person is a public figure like the politician and revealing the fact is important for public welfare.
That's common in many countries. "It's true" is only a valid defense if you're accusing someone of a crime.