You don't "have to" do anything. Ignoring criticism is always an option; you can rely on the audience to be able to tell truth from falsehood in many cases. People lie, and say mean stuff. Must there be a remedy for that built into the legal system? The US choice (and this stems directly from the first amendment) is broadly no. You can sue for damages from libel, but you need to be able to prove to the court that the offender actually knew what they were saying was wrong. Otherwise, they were just stating their opinion, however misguided it might have been. Opinions are protected speech.
You can sue for damages from libel, but you need to be able to prove to the court that the offender actually knew what they were saying was wrong.
It's not quite that simple. US libel law recognizes two classes of people: public figures and private citizens. Both classes of people have to demonstrate that the claim is false. Hence my high school journalism teacher's repeated phrase, "The best defense in a libel case is the truth."
For private citizens, a false claim is enough for libel. For public figures, it is not. Public figures have to prove malice. That is, the defendants knew that the statement was untrue, and said it for the purpose of causing harm. That's a very high bar.
The "actual malice" standard for libel against public figures does not require that something be said for the purpose of causing harm. It has nothing to do with the ordinary dictionary definition of the word "malice". Rather, it requires that the statement be either knowingly false, or made with reckless disregard for the truth. Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actual_malice
you need to be able to prove to the court that the offender actually knew what they were saying was wrong AFAIK not exactly. Reckless negligence (i.e. not caring at all about the truth of the accusation) may be enough - i.e. if one calls somebody a child molester without making any effort of finding out first if he is and without any base - it may be grounds for a suit, if it is not completely obvious that it is false and ridiculous.
The legal system should probably get involved when there is an imbalance of power.
Yes if an anon user on HN says another anon user on HN is a vi user instead of an emacs user - so what?
But if the NYT runs a front cover accusing me of some terrible crime, do I have to prove that I lost financialy because of it eg. I didn't get a new job, in order to get more than a retraction at the bottom of page 9?
If the Times truly and reasonably believed you were guilty, then you weren't libeled under US law. If they lied, then you have a case (and you don't have to "lose" anything financially per se, damages are more general than that).
I guess that doesn't seem to bad a compromise to me.
That's a good point, I'd forgotten about the private citizen distinction. Though again, the fact that the posited story was on the front page of the newspaper would sort of be an existence proof that the target was a public figure. Citizens whose lives are newsworthy are public, sort of by definition.
I was assuming he was positing it as an absurd example: he is clearly not a public figure, and was wrongly accused of something on the front page. Also, the distinction between public figure and private citizen is clearly not whether or not they are newsworthy; such a distinction, as you point out, would always come up "public figure" by definition.
If the NYTimes accuses me of having syphilis or being a child molestor, damages are assumed. You don't have to specifically show that you have been harmed.
You may need to show that the NYTimes knew it wasn't true, or had "reckless disregard for the truth," depending on your state and the specific case law.
Journalists who respect their craft report verifiable facts like, "According to police, excuse-me is a suspect in an ongoing investigation into [serious crime]." This story may damage you, but if a professional journalistic organization went to press with it, it is almost certainly verifiably true (barring a malicious reporter whose editor/fact-checker was laid off five years ago because Information Wants To Be Free).
Until your trial, "excuse-me committed [serious crime]" is undetermined and possibly libelous, but assuming the police did, in fact, name you as a suspect, "Police say excuse-me committed [serious crime]" true and therefore not libelous.
