What would you say if you received a message like this?
I’m a high school teacher. A group of parents held a public meeting, which the principal attended, and made serious allegations about my performance, including uncomplimentary slurs, some even involving my family. What can I do? I thought of contacting a lawyer, but too many of them are just in it for the money. Henry
This is one of the hundreds of emails I’ve received from people distressed because their reputations have been hurt. “Defamation” is the general term for harm to someone’s reputation. Slander is the verbal variety while libel is the written or broadcast type.
It wasn’t my intent to become an adviser to people who’ve been defamed. For years I was in contact with people at the other end of the story: they had been threatened with a legal action for defamation, or been sued. Often this served as a method of censorship.
Suppose you discover some corrupt activity and plan to report it. The person you were going to expose threatens to sue you if you say anything. This often happens to whistleblowers.
In 1996, I decided to write a leaflet to inform whistleblowers about defamation matters, and obtained comments from a range of individuals to make it as accurate as possible, including from a leading defamation barrister. Putting it on my website, soon it was being accessed more than anything else I had ever written. This was when the World Wide Web was becoming popular, and my leaflet provided practical information, in contrast with many legal treatments. It was titled “Defamation law and free speech.”
Soon I was receiving queries from numerous people, with diverse and often disturbing stories about their concerns about being silenced by defamation threats and actions. But along with these messages came a different sort of query, from people who had been defamed and wanted to know what to do about it.
I’m a career coach and see clients at a room in my home. One of them wrote a comment online saying “I saw him for a consultation. What to expect? He’s obese and his place is a mess!” Admittedly, I’m a little overweight but I keep my consultation room neat and tidy. Do I have grounds to sue?
A decade later, I wrote a short article, “What to do when you’ve been defamed.” It’s convenient to give people a link to an article rather than repeat the same advice. Each case is different but there are commonalities.
As the years have gone by, the frequency of defamation queries has dropped off, I presume because the amount of information on the web has grown and my articles are no longer as high on web searches. Recently I was scanning my old paper files, came upon a thick folder of queries about being defamed, and decided to upload samples of my advice, with the queries anonymised. My advice is monotonous in one way: I always say something along the lines of “Don’t sue!”
Most media attention to defamation is about high-profile cases, such as the suits launched by Ben Roberts-Smith and Bruce Lehrmann. Ironically, each of these legal actions greatly damaged the reputations of the individuals who sued, a phenomenon that can be called defamation backfire.
Roberts-Smith and Lehrmann are exceptions. Few individuals whose reputations have been harmed ever go to court, and few members of the public are aware of a huge undercurrent of distress about being defamed. That’s what I discovered through the stories of correspondents who wanted advice on what to do about it.
I often say, don’t sue unless you have a lot of money and don’t mind losing it. There are other options. At least that’s my advice in “Being defamed Q&A”.
Brian Martin
bmartin@uow.edu.au