Reason Magazine
•70% Informative
The N.H. Supreme Court ruled in a defamation case against the Union Leader Corp. in New Hampshire .
The court said that, in context, these statements would be understood by reasonable readers as statement of opinion, not of provable fact.
The vaguer a term, or the more meanings it reasonably can convey, the less likely it is to be verifiable and hence actionable.
The op-ed merely expressed the author's political opinions and beliefs that he individually held about the plaintiff and others not based on any undisclosed defamatory facts.
We conclude that the language falls within the realm of non-actionable opinion and, therefore, the trial court did not err in concluding that the plaintiff erred in concluding "none of the challenged statements" next asserts that a statement of "opinion" may reasonably be understood as the basis for the opinion.
Justice Melissa Countway disagreed on this point: "Nothing within this paragraph or the greater context of the op-ed states or implies that the plaintiff has engaged in 'concrete, wrongful conduct'" The Justices unanimously declined to recognize the "false light" tort, which allows liability for false statements about people even when they're not defamatory but are just offensive.
VR Score
83
Informative language
90
Neutral language
32
Article tone
semi-formal
Language
English
Language complexity
71
Offensive language
likely offensive
Hate speech
not hateful
Attention-grabbing headline
not detected
Known propaganda techniques
not detected
Time-value
medium-lived
External references
3
Source diversity
2