litfarm

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.