🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1999-04-24-02-00.0@chch.demon.co.uk>, Charles Bryant
<n94116989.ch@chch.demon.co.uk> writes
>In article <1970@thanatos.win-uk.net>,
>Paul Burridge <osiris@thanatos.win-uk.net> wrote:
>>In article <cKnA1AAJDDH3EwOD@kitzbuhel.demon.co.uk>, Andy 
>(andy@kitzbuhel.demon.co.uk) writes:
>>
>>>Isn't it more correct to say that *during those 10 days* Demon were
>>>publishing material which Dr Godfrey had asserted to them was libellous
>>>- no court having ruled it to be so.
>>
>>It doesn't take a court of law to declare something like the item
>>in question to be capable of being defamatory. Anyone with a
>>room-temperature IQ could see it was. 
>
>I don't think that can be so clear cut. News has trolling, which does
>not seem to appear in other media, so it's quite possible for someone to
>post an article with quite outrageous views just for the fun of seeing
>who gets taken in by it, and when the author admits they were only
>trolling, those taken in may feel that they have harmed their own
>reputations by showing how gullible they are.

You mean that it is like a saloon bar where we shoot people to see if
they can take a joke?


>In the case of the article in question, it could be argued that those
>credulous enough to believe it was genuine would have realised their
>mistake when it was pointed out that the author appeared to have
>misspelled his own name (which would have been supplied by his
>software, so it couldn't be human error).

You can argue that, but you are unlikely to persuade anyone.

-- 
David Swarbrick