You now know why libel and slander laws in the UK don't allow the factual truth to be an absolute defense.
His history with the criminal justice system is a fact, but the intention in the article is to discredit him for a debt to his community that has long been paid.
I don't know. If you were to say the man is a drug dealer, criminal and untrustworthy based on something >20 years in the past, unless your language clearly indicates that stuff was LONG in the past it seems intent on causing material harm to the person by misleading readers which is literally libel.
It's intent on changing public policy by persuading voters with argumentation. This is the most protected class of speech. That it publishes ugly true facts about individuals (which is also protected!) is an incidental step towards the author trying to paint a persuasive political narrative.
(I can't help but want to break this down. You say it's misleading, but the case docket is hyperlinked inline with the text you say is misleading—that's far more than adequate in US jurisprudence. No "reasonable person" (a technical standard) is misled on a fact that's plainly disclosed, just one click away. You say the criminality is in the "distant past"—but the person's felon status is current, ongoing, and in fact relevant to the author's line of arguing, which is that these nonprofits are a form of "laundering" federal government grants to people the federal government otherwise disqualifies. You think (and I'm sympathetic to this) that crimes committed 20+ years ago are not strongly reflective of the current human. But, this is a subjective interpretation—not an objective truth beyond reasonable debate; and the fact that the US government itself disagrees, by permanently disqualifying felons shows how ludicrous it'd be to argue, in a US court, that "he's a convicted felon" is speech without social value).
Let's revisit the original post, which wrote something critical of a $3 million government contract. Should that be legally perilous? Should be people be scared to express opinions online about how their governments award 7-figure contracts, out of fear of the contract recipients hiring law firms and suing them?
I was only trying to help you because it appeared that you misread the comment and began ranting about an unrelated matter from that misunderstanding. Not interested in this conversation, sorry.
Welll yes, and libel law incorporates precisely these sorts of protections! People would in fact get in field and kill each other precisely because “they disliked it so much they wanted to stop the other person from speaking”. Dead people don’t do much speaking, and libel/slander are a social response to the dead people.
> 370 Falsely and maliciously accusing another.
Sec. 370.
Falsely and maliciously accusing another of crime, etc.—Any person who shall falsely and maliciously, by word, writing, sign, or otherwise accuse, attribute, or impute to another the commission of any crime, felony or misdemeanor, or any infamous or degrading act, or impute or attribute to any female a want of chastity, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.
Literally only have to imply the commission of a false or degrading act, or imply a woman is a slut. Why do you think that would be historically if not to keep people from killing each other over saying things they didn’t like.
In the long run, less-free societies using free speech as a Trojan horse to disrupt our social cohesion will probably be the end of the US.
It’s not like anyone can feasibly invade or anything, and we’re the world reserve currency so it’s not going to be financial collapse. Meanwhile you see Russia and china very successfully exploiting the infowars/foundations-of-geopolitics tactics etc.
Untrammeled free speech is quite likely to literally be the thing that kills the US.
Meh. Ten years ago it was going to be the opposite. Unrestricted speech on the Internet was going to be thing took down every autocracy in the world. And for a while, it seemed to be working.
You can't blindly extrapolate in a system made of agents that adapt to what happens around them. It's not like this is the first time the US has been in turmoil.
Agreed, I personally believe no amount of jail time pays for the heinous crimes described above. The fact that they now get to enjoy a life heading an organization is infuriating to me compared to the life of trauma inflicted on the victim. She literally will never truly be whole. This isn't a robbery, there is no recourse for what they did. I'd much rather they spent their life repaying their debt by doing work they didn't actually want to do.
You know what? Fuck that. I dont care if they served their time, I am still going to make judgements about someone for doing something so wicked, until proven otherwise. People can change, yeah, but they usually don't. Seems like he wised up and found a new way to fuck over his fellow man, legally.
His history with the criminal justice system is a fact, but the intention in the article is to discredit him for a debt to his community that has long been paid.
This is just libel.