Have you considered that if the standard for defamation were actually as you hope it is/should be, she'd get about a microsecond to enjoy her victory over Nieman Lab before being crushed by Seth Rich's family over her rumormongering in that case?
Being sloppy is indeed enough to be sued. If I started telling people "microtherion is a Nazi" - you could sue me without proving I knew you are not a Nazi.
… on a Motion to Dismiss, which means literally "if we take everything the plaintiff says as the gospel truth, and dismiss anything the defendant says, would the plaintiff have a case?"
> It's literally mentioned in the article.
The judge allowed some of the numerous claims to proceed to the next trial stage, while dismissing others outright.
If you follow the article's link to the ruling, you will find that actual malice is literally the standard applied to many of the counts, which were indeed dismissed at the Motion to Dismiss stage: "mere negligence or deviation from professional standards is insufficient to allege actual malice".
Whether that standard applies to the libel charge depends on whether the plaintiff is a public figure, which apparently in that state is never decided in the Motion to Dismiss stage. However, the next step is generally a Motion for Summary Judgment, and odds are good that she will be found a (Limited, at least) public figure, at which point the Libel, Defamation, Emotional Distress, and Tortious Interference counts are history.
> you could sue me
Anyone could sue anyone for anything. Would I win? I doubt it.
> I hope her lawsuit is very successful. She was clearly targeted, ostracized, and fired for speaking her mind.
Those two statements have no connection to each other, since the lawsuit has nothing to do with her being targeted, ostracized and fired, instead (as you say) it's about her being defamed.
actually maybe the targeted is in reference to Nieman.
I guess I see not a legal connection, but the kind of connection that people often make in informal speech.
For good reason, many wrong things are completely legal, and still should be condemned.
If you are a journalism professor and are unable to recognise disinformation when you see it (e.g. Seth Rich conspiracy theories) then it calls your job competency into serious question. Yes, the firing would make Temple a better place to learn.
> try to ignore everything that Weinstein has become since then
I feel like this is difficult to do. I'd sort of argue that "we caught a bad faith actor early" is a good thing. Maybe you could argue that Bret wouldn't be what he is today if he weren't fired, but I don't really find that convincing.
It's a violation of the TOS. The recourse is Disqus cuts the offender's access (either the individual or the institution) for violating the TOS.
1) a false statement purporting to be fact (he says she wrote what she says she didn't)
2) publication or communication of that statement to a third person (yes, the doxing)
3) fault amounting to at least negligence (maybe debatable, but he accused her of writing something knowing only that an account registered to her posted it. He never asked her about it and has already admitted fault in accusing her without asking.)
4) damages (yes, her career)
Yes, I'm sure she would love to sue the university too. However she likely doesn't have a case there.
I hope she wins the lawsuit because they sloppily doxxed her and broke the terms of service of Disqus in doing so.
> Viola acknowledged writing most of the posts. But she denied being behind the anti-Muslim screed. That was critical to Sorokin’s decision to allow the libel and defamation part of Viola’s suit to proceed. The former professor “has plausibly alleged that Benton may have been negligent in his failure to verify that she was the author,” the judge wrote. He also took note of how Benton managed to discover and reveal her identity. Viola wrote her comments “based on the promise that her user information would be used for ‘moderation purposes only,’ which was violated when Benton posted her information on Twitter,” Sorokin wrote.