General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: DU should win a journalism award! Again the images of the shooter were posted hours before [View all]Tommy_Carcetti
(44,371 posts)On the one hand, you commend the poster who posted the (ultimately correct) picture of the suspect as engaging in "investigative journalism"
On the other hand, had the poster been incorrect in identifying the picture of the suspect and thus implicated some poor innocent soul as being culpable in a horrific act, then, well, it's just the internet and the poster was just stating an opinion.
You can't have it both ways.
And regardless of whether or not it would rise to the level of actionable defamation (had the picture ultimately not been correct), I would hope you would agree that rankly speculating on the internet whether a random person is in fact the perpetrator of a horrific act--before law enforcement chooses to make said information available to the public--should not be encouraged and is not productive behavior. And that it does not reflect well on this website to which both you and I belong.