WRITING ABOUT REAL PEOPLE

When a statement damages the reputation of all of the members of the group, and when those group members are known to the wider community, a frxuw#lv#pruh#olnho|#wr#Ľqg#vpdoo#jurxs#ghidpdwlrq/# even when the class of people is fairly large. [...] While a statement does not need to harm a person’s reputation in the eyes of all of the person’s associates, or even most of them, in order to be defamatory, it must harm the person’s reputation in the eyes of at least a sub0 stantial number of people in the community or deter people from associating with that person. [...] The amount of fault required for a valid defa0 mation claim depends on whether the subject of the vwdwhphqw#lv#d#sxeolf#Ľjxuh#+olnh#d#celebrity) or private Ľjxuh1#Iru#ghidpdwru|#vwdwhphqwv#derxw#sulydwh#Ľjxuhv/# a statement must be made with “negligence” for the speaker to be liable for defamation, meaning that the speaker failed to take a reasonable amount of care in verifying the statement’s ver. [...] The court ruled that the second use of the photo could not be the basis for a false light claim because the boy’s identifying features zhuh#qrw#vkrzq/#dqg#kh#frxog#rqo|#eh#lghqwlĽhg#e|#wkh# friends and relatives who could identify the boy based on knowing he was pictured in the lpdjhġv#Ľuvw#xvh#lq# the holiday collage.25 Wkh#lghqwlĽdelolw|#uhtxluhphqw#phdqv#wkdw#vxemhfwv# of false light portrayals. [...] Is the use of the identity exploitative? When the use of a real person’s identity goes beyond merely writing about that person in a text—such as when an author uses an image of a person in their work, or uses the person’s identity to advertise the work— frxuwv#vrphwlphv#Ľqg#wkh#xvh#wr#eh#ģh{sorlwdwlyh1Ĥ# Exploitative uses of an identity are ones that use the lghqwlw|#wr#jduqhu#dwwhqwlrq#iru#d#zrun.