Defamation is a communication that injures a third party's reputation and causes a legally redressable injury. The precise legal definition of defamation varies from country to country. It is not necessarily restricted to making assertions that are falsifiable, and can extend to concepts that are more abstract than reputation – like dignity and honour. In the English-speaking world, the law of defamation traditionally distinguishes between libel and slander. It is treated as a civil wrong, as a criminal offence, or both.
A gossip columnist is someone who writes a gossip column in a newspaper or magazine, especially in a gossip magazine. Gossip columns are written in a light, informal style, and relate opinions about the personal lives or conduct of celebrities from show business, politicians, professional sports stars, and other wealthy people or public figures. Some gossip columnists broadcast segments on radio and television.
Certain subject-matter in Australia is subject to various forms of government censorship. These include matters of national security, judicial non-publication or suppression orders, defamation law, the federal Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth), film and literature classification, and advertising restrictions.
New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that the freedom of speech protections in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution restrict the ability of public officials to sue for defamation. The decision held that if a plaintiff in a defamation lawsuit is a public official or candidate for public office, then not only must they prove the normal elements of defamation—publication of a false defamatory statement to a third party—they must also prove that the statement was made with "actual malice", meaning the defendant either knew the statement was false or recklessly disregarded whether it might be false. New York Times Co. v. Sullivan is frequently ranked as one of the greatest Supreme Court decisions of the modern era.
Nicolas Rex Smith is a New Zealand politician who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) for the National Party from 1990 to 2021. He served as a Cabinet minister, holding various posts including Minister for Building and Housing, Minister for the Environment, Minister for Climate Change Issues, and Minister of Local Government. For a brief time between October and November 2003 he was the deputy leader of the National Party, then in opposition under Don Brash.
Sir Trevor Colin Mallard is a New Zealand politician. He currently serves as Ambassador of New Zealand to Ireland since 2023. He was a Member of Parliament from 1984 to 1990 and again from 1993 to 2022. He served as Speaker of the New Zealand House of Representatives from 2017 until 2022.
The New Democratic Party of New Zealand was a small political party established in 1972. It was a splinter group from the better-known Social Credit Party.
Sir Timothy Richard Shadbolt is a New Zealand politician. He was the Mayor of Invercargill from 1998 to 2022, and previously Mayor of Waitemata City.
ProfessorRohan Gunaratna is a threat specialist of the global security environment. Professor Gunaratna has over 30 years of academic, policy, and operational experience in national and international security. He is Professor of Security Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technology University, Singapore.
Lange v Australian Broadcasting Corporation is a High Court of Australia case that upheld the existence of an implied freedom of political communication in the Australian Constitution, but found that it did not necessarily provide a defence to a defamation action. The High Court extended the defence of qualified privilege to be compatible with the freedom of political communication.
Andrew James Little is a New Zealand lawyer, former politician and former trade union official. He was Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition from 2014 to 2017 and a senior minister in the Labour governments led by Jacinda Ardern and Chris Hipkins from 2017 to 2023, including as Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, Minister of Justice, Minister of Health and Minister of Defence.
Modern libel and slander laws in many countries are originally descended from English defamation law. The history of defamation law in England is somewhat obscure; civil actions for damages seem to have been relatively frequent as far back as the Statute of Gloucester in the reign of Edward I (1272–1307). The law of libel emerged during the reign of James I (1603–1625) under Attorney General Edward Coke who started a series of libel prosecutions. Scholars frequently attribute strict English defamation law to James I's outlawing of duelling. From that time, both the criminal and civil remedies have been found in full operation.
Raymond Huo is a New Zealand politician who was a Member of Parliament from 2008 to 2014 and from 2017 to 2020. He was first elected in 2008 as the New Zealand Labour Party's first MP of Chinese descent. He was the third Chinese New Zealander to enter Parliament, after the National Party's Pansy Wong and ACT's Kenneth Wang.
Cameron Slater is a right-wing New Zealand-based blogger, best known for his role in Dirty Politics and publishing the Whale Oil Beef Hooked blog, which operated from 2005 until it closed in 2019. He edited the tabloid newspaper New Zealand Truth from November 2012 until it ceased publication in July 2013. Following the closure of WhaleOil in 2019, Slater launched a new political blog called the BFD, which was succeeded by The Good Oil in July 2024.
New Conservatives is a conservative political party in New Zealand. Some opponents and observers have described the party's policies as far-right, though the party now states it has moved to a "more centrist" position under new leadership. It advocates for lower taxation, anti-abortion measures and austerity cuts.
Colin Craig is a New Zealand businessman and perennial candidate who was the founding leader of the Conservative Party of New Zealand.
The tea tape scandal was an incident involving the New Zealand Prime Minister and National Party leader John Key and ACT Party candidate John Banks during the New Zealand general election campaign in 2011. Their meeting in an Auckland café on 11 November 2011, two weeks before election day, was seen as a symbolic endorsement of Banks as the National Party's favoured candidate for the Epsom electorate. After they had sat together publicly for some time, news media personnel were asked to leave. A journalist, Bradley Ambrose, left his recording device behind, and subsequently gave the recording of the politicians' conversation to the Herald on Sunday newspaper, which declined to publish it. The recording allegedly contained comments about the leadership of ACT and disparaging remarks about elderly New Zealand First supporters.
Kesha v. Dr. Luke refers to a series of lawsuits and countersuits between the singer Kesha Rose Sebert (Kesha) and the music producer Łukasz Sebastian Gottwald. Sebert filed a civil suit against Gottwald in October 2014 for infliction of emotional distress, sex-based hate crimes and employment discrimination. Gottwald filed a lawsuit in New York Supreme Court in which he sued Sebert and her mother, Rosemary Patricia "Pebe" Sebert, for defamation and breach of contract.
The Real Housewives of Auckland was a New Zealand reality television series that premiered on Bravo on 22 August 2016.
Hutchinson v. Proxmire, 443 U.S. 111 (1979), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that statements made by a Senator in newsletters and press releases were not protected by the Speech or Debate Clause.
