Careless Blog Postings Can Lead To Defamation Suits

While the Internet has given tens of millions of individuals the ability to play journalist through blogging, the key difference is that professional reporters have fact-checkers, strict editorial standards, an editing process and the liability backing of their organizations.

Bloggers mostly just have opinions, although some have proven to be worthy citizen journalists and have broken important news stories. But what bloggers don't have is the liability protection of a news organization, as a Los Angeles Times article makes clear.

That's why Chicago injury lawyers would tell their blogging clients to be careful what they post, since it could come back to haunt them in the form of a defamation lawsuit.

Sandra Baron, executive director of the Media Law Resource Center in New York, said she has seen a spike in lawsuits from blog postings:

"It was probably inevitable, but we have seen a steady growth in litigation over content on the Internet."

What about free speech, you may ask?

Well, even free speech has its limits if it causes injury to another individual. In this case, the injury from speech takes the form of comments that are untrue and negatively affect that person's reputation.

And some inflammatory blog postings even have triggered criminal charges, including one entry by right-wing blogger Hal Turner. He faces as much as 10 years in prison for posting a comment that three particular Chicago judges "deserve to be killed" for their positions with regard to the 2nd Amendment challenge to the city's handgun ban.

Even posting defamatory comments to online news articles or blog entries can lead to a lawsuit. While Web sites are not liable for such content, they can be forced to hand over the name of violators to authorities.

Before posting comments or blog entries, just ask yourself whether the language is both false (or at least unproven) and potentially damaging to one's reputation. If so, it might be smart to pull back.

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