Quote:
Originally Posted by Fire of the Phoenix
What's the difference between the garbage tabloids write about celebrities and this? Honestly curious. There's no way half the stuff they write is true.
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Depending on what's written, sometimes no difference. Tabloids have been sued successfully for what they've written.
But tabloids probably have a lot of experience on how to word things and just how far to go. And some people probably avoid suing them because they feel the damage of that publicity probably outweighs the damage of the tabloid. Or that tabloids don't have lots of money like they used to.
There are defences for defamation, truth being one, but there are a few others, including opinions, and comments that may be defamatory but are done in good faith and without malice to as few people as possible (like saying someone caused a morale problem in a job reference). Reporting or discussing matters of public interest is a defence as well, which is why we don't want people spreading rumours here, but if something is published elsewhere or we are talking about the rumour not spreading the rumour it's ok.
Pretty much all the examples Buster and similar have used to try and draw parallels to the tweet are false equivalences, being opinions or discussion of reports of public interest, etc. That's why it's fine to say player x is a bad influence (opinion) and not player y slept with z (defamatory if untrue).