Defamation Offenses as a Threat to Media Security: Types, Signs, Features of Proving

This article is devoted to practical issues of proving defamatory offenses that have become especially widespread due to the development of information technologies and that infringe on the honor, dignity, business reputation (create a threat to the media security of individuals and legal entities). The author examines various approaches to the scope and content of the concept of “defamation”, substantiates the doctrinal understanding of defamation as the dissemination (intentionally or unintentionally) of defamatory, but exclusively false information about a person, as well as insulting a person. Exceptions to this approach are described and it is substantiated that the most correct way to include in the scope of the concept of “defamation” is the dissemination (intentionally or unintentionally) of false and (or) defamatory information about a person, as well as insulting a person, since this approach, on the one hand, covers both cases of knowingly false dissemination of defamatory information (slander), and humiliation of honor and dignity in an indecent form (insults); on the other hand, it takes into account the variability of the signs of a defamatory nature and unreliability of information for exceptional cases. Thus, analyzing the common features of defamatory offenses, the author combines civil defamation, libel, and insult into one group. The article provides a comparative analysis of the signs of the objective side of the three types of defamatory offenses, and also examines the features of using specialized knowledge in defamation cases.