[furball]

Originally Posted by pig

I will await Yahwe (and Furball) to back me up, but my idea is of defamation is

If I accused you of saying sleeping with another man whilst you were married.

I printed a story of that.

In a court of law defamation in England and Wales is different to a normal trial (ie innocent until proven guilty) the onus would be on me.

I would have to prove that you were indeed sleeping with another men.

Hence why what is published these days is mostly true.

I haven't studied defamation law at all, but I presume that Yahwe has summarised it accurately in his Yahwe Explains thread.

Originally Posted by Yahwe

1) The test for libel

(NB - This was the cause of action used in the forum suing case)

a) There must be a publication
b) This publication must be of a permanent nature
c) Said publication must cause "hatred, ridicule or contempt" of the person defamed.

If these three are fulfilled then there is a prima facie case.

It is then for the Jury to decide how badly you were defamed (or if you were defamed at all) and grant appropriate damages.

a and b are easy to satisfy - there's a publication of a permanent nature such as the magazine/newspaper proposed

You need to cause hatred, ridicule or contempt of the person allegedly defamed - now I'm not sure whether these take their natural meanings or have specific common law tests (probably the former), but ridicule/contempt should be easily provable in the situation you proposed.

Originally Posted by _Kila_

Indeed, tabloids are very un-reliable, they often claim to quote "sources close to <celebrity name here>" but these sources are almost always fictional characters which tabloids have conjured up.

This is in fact a minority of their reporting. Many papers, including broadsheets, will quote 'friends' of the celebrity - and the two possible understandings you can have of that is that the friend does not want to be named and attract the resulting attention, or that they're made up. I wouldn't want to even guess at the ratio between the two, but falling for the fallacy that it's 50/50 would be a mistake.

The real problem with the tabloids is the spin they put on everything and the way in which this spin gets in the way of the news itself (in contrast with the traditional broadsheets). A quick read through the opinion/editorial columns of the Sun is enough to make me feel nauseous.