Peripart
Antediluvian
- Joined
- Aug 1, 2005
- Messages
- 6,732
This is something that "Have I Got News For You" first started, as far as I can tell. Angus Deayton used to say something borderline-libellous about some public figure and then, after a slight pause, say "allegedly". The implication was, of course, that if you were only repeating an allegation, and not making one of your own, then you were not opening yourself up to charges of libel. I'm not saying it wasn't funny - it was very amusing, at least the first few dozen times. Funnier still was that when it came to Jeffrey Archer, they never bothered to say "allegedly" at all, at least not after he'd been to prson, but that's another story.
This seems to be a fairly widespread belief, although newspapers now have the trick of putting unproven charges in inverted commas, as in:
This seems to be a fairly widespread belief, although newspapers now have the trick of putting unproven charges in inverted commas, as in:
So is this correct or not? If, to take the (alleged) example above, HRH the Duke of York turned out not to have sodomised a corgi, maybe not any dog at all, would the use of the "A"-word or inverted commas protect the newspaper or TV show from prosecution? Or is it just an UL that you can cover your tracks this way?Prince Andrew "buggered his corgi", says palace insider