A green light for the redtops | Richard Peppiatt

That you can't libel the dead under English law means an apology is simply the cost of doing business for tabloid editorsIt is an interesting quirk of the English legal system that you can't libel the dead. Very handy if you're a tabloid news editor, at say, the Sun, and you publish an article about 23-year-old Julian Brooker from Brighton becoming a "human fireball" after touching a railway line while crawling around pretending to be Gollum from Lord of the Rings. The shop assistant was drunk, ...

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