Defamation

Defamation—also called calumny, vilification, or traducement—is the communication of a false statement that harms the reputation of an individual, business, product, group, government, religion, or nation. Most jurisdictions allow legal action to deter various kinds of defamation and retaliate against groundless criticism.

Under common law, to constitute defamation, a claim must generally be false and have been made to someone other than the person defamed. False:
 * Ron Hankin, Navigating the Legal Minefield of Private Investigations: A Career-Saving Guide for Private Investigators, Detectives, And Security Police, Looseleaf Law Publications, 2008, p. 59. "There are five essential elements to defamation: (1) The accusation is false; and (2) it impeaches the subject's character; and (3) it is published to a third person; and (4) it damages the reputation of the subject; and (5) that the accusation is done intentionally or with fault such as wanton disregard of facts."
 * Roger LeRoy Miller, Gaylord A. Jentz, Business Law Today: The Essentials, Cengage Learning, 2007, p. 115. "In other words, making a negative statement about another person is not defamation unless the statement is false and represents something as a fact (for example, 'Vladik cheats on his taxes') rather than a personal opinion (for example, 'Vladik is a jerk')."
 * Michael G. Parkinson, L. Marie Parkinson, Law for advertising, broadcasting, journalism, and public relations, Routledge, 2006, p. 273. "Simplifying a very complicated decision, the court said that because the plaintiff must prove a statement is false in order to win an action in defamation, it is impossible to win an action in defamation if the statement, by its very nature, cannot be proven false."
 * Edward Lee Lamoureux, Steven L. Baron, Claire Stewart, Intellectual property law and interactive media: free for a fee, Peter Lang, 2009, p. 190. "A statement can only be defamatory if it is false; therefore true statements of fact about others, regardless of the damage rendered, are not defamatory (although such comments might represent other sorts of privacy or hate speech violations). Defamation may occur when one party (the eventual defendant if a case goes forward) writes or says something that is false about a second party (plaintiff) such that some third party "receives" the communication, and the communication of false information damages the plaintiff". Some common law jurisdictions also distinguish between spoken defamation, called slander, and defamation in other media such as printed words or images, called libel.

Similar to defamation is public disclosure of private facts, which arises where one person reveals information that is not of public concern, and the release of which would offend a reasonable person. "Unlike [with] libel, truth is not a defense for invasion of privacy." . False light laws protect against statements which are not technically false but misleading.

In some civil law jurisdictions, defamation is treated as a crime rather than a civil wrong. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights ruled in 2012 that the criminalization of libel violates freedom of expression and is inconsistent with Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

A person who defames another may be called a "defamer", "famacide", "libeler" or "slanderer".