Which of These Headlines Is Defamatory?

Takes one to know one.

After American Media Inc. complained that the original headline was "defamatory," Folio: magazine today tweaked the headline on an article about AMI's Star magazine publishing SlimFast ads that masqueraded as articles.

Folio: also published AMI's statement about the article, in which the publisher of National Enquirer and other scholarly journals huffed, "We are very concerned about the defamatory headline and implication in your article, [sic] that falsely states AMI 'pulled' SlimFast ads after a challenge from the Better Business Bureau."

You see, when Star headlined an article about the long friendship of John Travolta and Tom Cruise with "30 Year Gay Secret" even though the article had nothing more than vague references to "gay rumors," that's not defamatory. It's poetic license. (Citing the "bait-and-switch" cover, Gossip Cop gave the article a zero on its accuracy scale.)

Or when the Enquirer ran one hideously Photoshopped cover image after another during the Presidential campaign to "prove" that Hillary Clinton was about to die from brain cancer, that's free speech.

(As Politico's Jack Shafer wrote, "You don’t have to be a Hillary lover to be repulsed by the Enquirer’s coverage of her; the sicknesses the Enquirer has attached to Clinton would fill a medical encyclopedia—muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, endometriosis and brain damage from her concussion. She suffers from obesity (289 pounds), brain cancer and mental disorders, and has had two strokes, the Enquirer claims.")

But when Folio:, a magazine that covers the U.S. magazine industry, writes "Pulls" instead of "Discontinues," that's a DEFAMATION SHOCKER!, as the Enquirer's headline writers would say. Time to call the lawyers and shoot the messenger.

What Folio: didn't alter was its description and depiction of how AMI's round-heeled business ethics were on display in the SlimFast campaign -- including the factoid that "a number of dubious articles, purportedly written by editorial staffers but almost certainly part of a paid SlimFast campaign, proliferate throughout AMI's portfolio of websites."

But Folio: did add some comic relief to the updated version by publishing AMI's shoot-yourself-in-the-foot statement verbatim, including the comment that the company doesn't think it did anything wrong.