Something a little more serious than usual: libel and defamation. A computer, an internet connection, and one or more functional digits is pretty much all you need to be an irresponsible journalist these days.
“What journalist? I’m a blogger,” you’re saying. The truth is, if you’re making an unprivileged publication of another person’s statements to a third party–ie writing it on a publicly accessible blog–you’re one-quarter of the way to defamation.
Clearly it’s worth educating yourself about defamation and its cousins libel and slander. Luckily, OurMedia has a concise online guide for bloggers. And if you’ve been synergizing all morning, they even have links to an executive summary to get you up to speed and proactive.
Read it before you update your site about the Moon Landing Hoax with nine-point proof of Chandrayaan-1′s real mission, and save yourself the embarrassment of being punched in the face by a living legend. Or being sued for libel. Mostly the latter.
Tags: blogging, defamation, journalism, non-fiction
my work got a fun little letter accusing us of libel a couple months ago. It was totally unfounded but did take some time to deal with. The bonus – our legal work is done by volunteers. Even a false suit where you have to breathe in a lawyers office will cost you upwards of $300/hour.
Good times!
That kind of SLAPP can be pretty scary for a charity, private individual or other poorly funded organization. Was it something you published online or in print?
both. We had identified that a woman had experienced violence in her previous relationship. The ex-partner came forward saying we had accused him of criminal acts (since physical abuse is a criminal offence.) Technically what he said was true so we had to reword our press releases and website information. It is very tricky with libel since often what you are saying is true it just might also have unintended implications.