If the Washington Post decides to do an expose on “dschapin” of Free Republic and says you have been shown to have dalliances with women in 23 states, as long as the Washington Post said there was no malice, that should be okay?
It would be easy to prove malice in that case since they would have no evidence and they would know that publishing such a scurrilous lie would hurt my reputation. That is why they would never publish that story because I would easily be able to sue them for libel under current law.