Kerrang Lose Libel case

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6272545.stm

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy (Kerr), Wednesday, 17 January 2007 21:44 (nineteen years ago)

what a load of wank.

― grimly fiendish (grimlord), Wednesday, 17 January 2007 21:47 (nineteen years ago)

UK libel laws seem so weirdly loose and easy to exploit -- good lord, it's as if the British courts want people to file these complaints there.

Anyway, can anyone explain the legal standard on this one? If the source of this allegation is the band's drummer, what kind of confirmation or verification would the publication need in order to print the thing? Is the legal standard seriously such that one person's allegation is unprintable without some kind of validation from elsewhere? (And surely they were smart enough to couch this as "drummer Moose claims he found Strickland masturbating," or "Strickland was masturbating, according to Moose").

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 17 January 2007 23:10 (nineteen years ago)

According to the article they didn't even use the manager's name.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Wednesday, 17 January 2007 23:15 (nineteen years ago)

the final paragraph is particularly confusing

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 17 January 2007 23:24 (nineteen years ago)

Publisher Emap Metro had argued the claim, made in an interview with the band Bullet For My Valentine, was true.

I may be a media law n00b, but... this is pretty much the textbook definition of how _not_ to defend libel cases, right?

― Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Wednesday, 17 January 2007 23:44 (nineteen years ago)

Well, only if you can't actually demonstrate its truth, right? I'd think the best defense would actually be something like "whether it's true or not, here's a bunch of foolproof evidence justifying why we'd legitimately believe it was."

― nabisco (nabisco), Wednesday, 17 January 2007 23:51 (nineteen years ago)

Why wasn't he suing the band guy who claimed it?

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy (Kerr), Thursday, 18 January 2007 13:55 (nineteen years ago)

because that's slander

― richard wood johnson (rwj), Thursday, 18 January 2007 17:19 (nineteen years ago)

I'm not sure of British libel law, but in Canada, you can be sued for defamation even if the libelous statement is attributed to someone in the story.

― Binjominia (Brilhante), Thursday, 18 January 2007 18:01 (nineteen years ago)

That makes perfect sense, but it has to be backed by some kind of standard for corroborration, doesn't it? (Fact-checking masturbation claims is notoriously difficult, though, as I learned when writing that story about Carson Daly.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 18 January 2007 18:35 (nineteen years ago)

No one even knew about the story. Now everyone will and they will now call him a wanker anyway.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy (Kerr), Friday, 19 January 2007 00:04 (nineteen years ago)

40 grand for NOT being a wanker ! EASY MONEY

― DJ Martian (djmartian), Friday, 19 January 2007 00:09 (nineteen years ago)

Mr Justice Tugendhat

how apt

― ewmy (ewmy), Friday, 19 January 2007 13:10 (nineteen years ago)

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