Assignment 3

Defamation

Defamation: a false accusation of an offense or a malicious misrepresentation of someone's words or actions.
Defamation- aspersion: an abusive attack on a person's character or good name.
http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=defamation

Part 1
The blogosphere is full of defamatory and offensive statements. See if you can find something that you feel goes somewhere near defamation, or would be sufficiently inflammatory to annoy a company or individual or class of people into a lawsuit.

Identify the text which you believe is defamatory, inflammatory or offensive enough to give rise to a lawsuit. Explain your reasons for choosing it.


Potential Defamation Case
http://www.cyberbullying.info/examples/msg.php?eg=frawley

Greg Frawley left Hurlstone Agriculture High School after unidentified students set up a website to accuse him and another teacher of being child molesters who should be killed.

The highlighted orange words above show reason enough to encourage the two falsely accused teachers to be annoyed enough to give rise to a lawsuit. I chose this passage because it is an interesting example of cyber-bullying. More often than not, cyber-bullying is directed towards teenagers or younger children that are in the same school classes as the cyber bullies. In this case the abuse is directed at two high school teachers. It would take a very strong willed or several strong willed students to want to do something like this, and were taking a big risk by creating the website. Had the students been found out by the two teachers mentioned on the website, they may have been charged. Below is a more in depth article about the case.

The full story is featured here on the Sydney Morning Herald website:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/11/14/1100384429648.html?from=storylhs

This is a shorter version of the story...

Teachers subject to internet hate campaigns seek support
By Linda Doherty, Education Editor
Nov 15, 2004

A teacher vilified on a student-run website at a Sydney selective school has set up a support group for victims of web abuse by "flamers" who use the internet to publish malicious allegations.

Greg Frawley left Hurlstone Agricultural High School in the city's south-west after unidentified students set up a website "throwstones", to accuse him and another male teacher of being child molesters who should be killed.

The Hurlstone website, discovered in late July, recommended that the two teachers be "executed", accused some (other teachers) of paedophilia and one (teacher) of stealing. But in a letter to the director-general of the Department of Education, Mr. Frawley said the school did not initially lodge a critical incident report to the department to notify it that teachers could be at risk.

"Can you imagine how you would feel if a story posted on the internet stated that you were a child molester and that this message was rapidly communicated to students you taught?" Mr. Frawley wrote.

"You become an alien in your own world, stained with the worst social stigma of all... You start thinking that being dead is an option."

An education department spokesman said schools had sophisticated technology to monitor inappropriate internet use. But those behind the Hurlstone website have not been caught, and police say no charges will be laid.


Part 2

With your example for Part 1 in mind, imagine yourself as the offender, and then as the offended. Answer the following three questions from both points of view.

1. Why do people write these things?
2.What is their motivation?
3. Why would the offended people want to take action?

The Offender's Point of View

1.Why do people write these things?
They may not like the person or people for a particular reason. This case is about 2 teachers so maybe the offenders caused a lot of trouble with the teachers or didn't like their teaching methods. They may also be selfish kids who have not been disciplined enough to know the difference between what is right and wrong. They also may not feel compassion towards their victims and may even enjoy taunting them.

2.What is their motivation?
Boredom, expressing their opinions because they feel mistreated, or as I said they may enjoy causing trouble. They may also have no idea how to treat people due to their backgrounds or maybe that is the way their parents treated them when they were younger so they think this behaviour is normal.

3. Why would the offended people want to take action?
In the offenders point of view the offended people may want to take action to take revenge on them or to catch them in the act. They are probably only thinking about themselves and thinking along the lines of, "They want to get me into trouble". But they wouldn't get into trouble in the first place had they not caused any. The offenders may not realise how hurtful the statements they made are to the offended person's physical and psychological wellbeing.

The Offended Person's Point of View

1. Why do people write these things?
To damage the offended person's reputation and cause them pain. In this case I think this is what the offender's main aim was, as they had 4 websites made to defame teachers, not just one (website). If they had wanted to just complain about their teaching methods they could have either complained to the teacher themselves or talked to the principal, or if it was really bad the Minister of Education.

2.What is their motivation?
Again I think it was to cause trouble and from the articles I found it sounds like that's what the offended teachers thought too.

3.Why would the offended people want to take action?

In August 2004, one of the teachers, (Mr. Frawley) was talking to lawyers.

He wanted the Education Department to..." pursue defamation proceedings against the unknown students- and criminal prosecution for the death threats- to set a precedent to stop other technologically savvy students from copycat actions." He also contacted Yahoo Australia and begged them to shut down the student website involved in this case saying, "For every minute it (the website) continued operating the impact of defamation is growing out of control."

This teacher wanted to stop other people from committing defamation so that more people do not suffer from damaging accusations like this. His confidence was shattered from the comments on the website and it is unfortunate that the culprits were not found. They should have been taught a lesson so that they wouldn't be encouraged to start another website like this again. They might have by now.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/25/1093246584317.html