I have seen no evidence that the general public has gone "bat shit crazy" or even noticed the story. Perhaps you are paying too much attention to news sources that magnify the facts to get a more interesting story. The technique has been around for more than 100 years: see Yellow journalism.

Yes, I would give people a pass to hit-and-run. I would do so because I believe the only alternative is disallowing anonymous libelous speech, either by suppressing the speech or piercing the anonymity. The problem is that the definition of libelous will be perverted by the powerful to include anything that makes them uncomfortable, and that leads to the suppression of anonymous dissent.

And yet there are still some reporters who do investigations.

I think you have identified the heart of the problem: "...the masses in general are stupid." It is my hope that, in time, the masses will become less stupid. Even so, I would rather suffer from the stupidity of the masses than risk the suppression of all speech that offends the powerful.

In order for libel laws to be effective, it has to be possible to identify the accuser. Even when it is, the accuser may be beyond the reach of justice, for example by being dead. The major benefit of libel laws, in my opinion, is that they provide a public forum (court) where the issue can be debated and a neutral party (judge or jury) can publicly decide who is right. That doesn't work if the accuser can't be made to defend his position.

In my opinion, the libel laws should apply only to an accuser who is willing to defend his accusation in public. Society should give no weight to anonymous accusations unless they are accompanied by a persuasive argument. If the accusation involves criminal conduct the State can pursue the criminal case. If it doesn't, the accused might feel that a public response to the argument is warranted.

You have a good point, and I don't have a very good answer either. There is the evil of being persecuted based on unfounded rumor, and there is the evil of "the right to be forgotten" leading to unpersons as described in "Nineteen Eighty-Four", where the inner party controls history.

Personally, I feel that the risk of tyranny is the greater of the two evils. If somebody is unwilling to deal with me socially because of a rumor about me that they've heard, and they are unwilling to ask me or those who know me personally about it, then I accept that I lose out, either on a friend, a job, a customer, or whatever. It's a price I am willing to pay.

Furthermore, I am not sure the evils that follow an unjust accusation will last forever. In time, those who rejected you will realize that you aren't such a bad guy after all, and your social status will slowly recover. Yes, people meeting you for the first time will be put off by the old records of the rumor, but those close to you will, I believe, eventually forgive you.

The road you are going down leads to suppression of speech which the powerful find uncomfortable. I would rather have the ability for an anonymous speaker to remain anonymous, no matter what he says. I would rather make the effort to ignore hateful and foolish speech than risk the suppression of dissent.

An interesting article, thank you. It recounts a shameful period of American history, when people were convicted of child abuse based on manufactured evidence. However, I do not agree that "everyone in San Diego" believed that Dale Akiki was a satanic pedophile. My daughter was living in San Diego at the time, and I don't think she believed it. In fact, I would venture to guess that most people in San Diego who were even aware of the trial treated it as theatre.

If the original accusation was simple "She's a witch" then it would have been better to ignore it, in my opinion. Apparently she thought she could ridicule her opponents by turning it into a joke. Maybe she is right.

I know what a mob can do. I'll never forget the Watts riots. Nevertheless, I believe in the basic goodness of people. As best I can tell, most people who riot are looters, just trying to steal stuff. They feel like if they don't take something they are foolishly depriving themselves. I don't see any evil there, just greed and selfishness.

There are truly evil people in the world, but they are by far the minority.

I agree, but I don't think Mr. Hadley believes that all of his future political opponents will be 11 years old.

Doesn't filing a court case do even more than a denial to make the original allegation more prominent?

I have faith in people's intelligence. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think most people will see through baseless accusations, and not simply react to them with revulsion. If I were accused anonymously of pedophilia, with no further details, I would simply ignore the accusation, and I think most people would.

If somebody makes something up about me there are consequences: he loses credibility. I think that's enough. Yes, if you say something loud enough, and often enough, people will start to believe it. However, the Internet cuts both ways. I can deny a baseless accusation in a blog post, and anyone who cares enough to check will find it.

A system which could somehow suppress false accusations runs the danger of being perverted into suppression of any criticism of the powerful. I would rather have no suppression at all than take that risk.

The proper defense against a smear campaign is not to try to silence the smearer, but to defend yourself against the merits of the attack. If it is a bare, unsupported, accusation, just deny it. If the smearer offers evidence, offer evidence of your own that the accusation is untrue. The cure for bad speech is not less bad speech but more good speech.

I am a firm believer in free speech. The cure for bad speech (as the accusation apparently was) is not less bad speech but more good speech. If I were accused, anonymously, of pedophilia, I would not try to use the courts to find my accuser. Instead I would ignore the accusation unless it was repeated by an identifiable person, such as a reporter asking if it were true. I would answer the reporter by saying it was not, and offering to cooperate with the reporter's investigation into whether or not I was a podophile if he felt the accusation was credible enough to be worth the effort.

I don't think he will be disappointed. I think the purpose of the lawsuit is to send a message to Mr. Hadley's future political opponents to be careful what they say about him. In other words, this is intended to have a chilling effect on political speech.