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Your first sentence echoes the sorry state of affairs regarding what passes for journalism these days. Getting all angles of the story and doing fact checking
by binarymax 12y ago
Your first sentence echoes the sorry state of affairs regarding what passes for journalism these days. Getting all angles of the story and doing fact checking is absolutely the responsibility of the journalist. The author had the professors name - all it takes is 5 minutes of research to get contact information to follow up correctly. The journalist really has no excuse in this matter.
- ar-jan 12y ago> The author had the professors name No, as far as we know the articles were based on the University Health legal notice http://www.uhsystem.com/Conway/FINAL%20Conway%20-%20Press%20Release%20-%202014-8-15.pdf http://www.uhsystem.com/Conway/FINAL%20Conway%20-%20Press%20..., which does NOT contain Sam's name. Can you accuse someone of libel if the accused is unnamed? This doesn't take away from the fact that the claims in the report are false, of course.
- spacemanmatt 12y agoYes, you can accuse someone of anonymous libel. This is how ISPs end up with subpoenas for real identities and attorneys appearing to represent anonymous parties.
- lutusp 12y ago> Can you accuse someone of libel if the accused is unnamed? Only if the unnamed person can be identified. If a person is unnamed, or given a made-up name, and readers cannot associate the name with a real person, the it's not libel. Many legal actions revolve around this issue. A plaintiff says, "I'm the person this article is about!" while simultaneously claiming, "The article doesn't describe me accurately!" Only one of those can be true.