Defamation can be defined as the act of making a false statement designed to damage the reputation of a person or organisation. In contrast, truth cannot be defamatory no matter how damaging it is.
In this post I will outline the evidence that supports my argument that the City of Moreland has falsely accusing me of defamation. The screenshots published in this story are unedited apart from blanking out references to other people to protect their privacy.
On Friday 15 February 2013 at 8.51am the City of Moreland sent me the following message in Facebook accusing me of making a defamatory post on their Facebook page:
In the past week I had made 1 post on their Facebook page and had later made 1 comment on a post by another user. It is not clear which of these they refer to. Both contributions were removed. While I expected these contributions to be deleted, the accusation of defamation is false and the City of Moreland has no evidence to support it.
On Wednesday 13 February 2013 at 12:01am I published a post criticising the City of Moreland for mismanaging the recruitment process for a contract role I applied for. The post is factual and the City of Moreland has produced no evidence to refute the circumstances I describe. It therefore cannot be considered defamatory.
I posted a link to the article on their Facebook page at 12.45am the same day thinking it would be a fun game to see how long they took to notice and remove it. The post survived the entire business day of the 13th as the following screenshot, taken at 5.41pm that day, demonstrates:
My post also survived the entire next business day, the 14th, as the screenshot made at 6.58pm that day demonstrates:
By that time, someone else had posted on their Facebook page and I commented on that post at 6.59pm:
By ‘managing’ the page I mean monitoring it and responding to posts in a timely and appropriate manner, in other words by providing customer service. The City of Moreland replies to questions posted on its page in an inconsistent manner, sometimes only after an unreasonable delay. In some instances it does not reply at all:
These examples provide evidence to support my assertion that City of Moreland is not ‘managing’ its Facebook page. My comment on this post cannot therefore be considered defamatory.
I have demonstrated in this post that the evidence suggests that my two contributions to the City of Moreland Facebook page cannot reasonably or accurately be described as defamatory.
In response to this false accusation I accuse the City of Moreland of itself making a false and defamatory statement about me: namely that I made a defamatory post about them. This accusation cannot be sustained by the available evidence.
I have emailed every member of council, including the mayor and deputy mayor, to inform them of the behaviour of their staff and to request an explanation and apology. I have invited the councillors to acknowledge council’s wrongdoing and to apologise for the unprofessional and unethical behaviour of its staff.
It’s also a curious coincidence that within the last couple of days someone from E-Secure, a company that claims to be ‘a specialist provider of the full range of Information Security and Risk Management services’ has looked at my Linkedin profile. Has the the Moreland City Council hired some corporate goons to check up on me?
Governments don’t like receiving critical feedback from citizens. Speaking truth to power is often interpreted as an attack that must be neutralised regardless of its veracity. They need to learn that they don’t control us and, if they treat citizens with disdain and contempt, we will respond.
18 February 2013 at 3:05 pm
The title of the post which you put on their site says “Employment incompetence.” Accusing someone of being incompetent is I think potentially defamatory if incorrect. Do you disagree?
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18 February 2013 at 3:45 pm
Given the facts I outline in my original post on the issue this conclusion is justified and reasonable, hence not defamatory.
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18 February 2013 at 4:03 pm
Yes but you posted “employment incompetence at the city of moreland” on their Facebook page.
You did not post the full article or your reasoning. You did not post” I have experienced what I believe to be incompetent behaviour”. You posted a broad headline statement which was in no way limited. In fact your headline is so broad it is not clear that what you are talking about. Surely you are not suggesting that all employment is incompetent or indeed that all employees are incompetent. Your post may or may not be defamatory. I personally think it is. I think their behaviour was inconsiderate and unnecessarily disruptive to applications but not incompetent. They were doing what they thought was best to get the best result. Not fair to you but perhaps fair to rate payers in enabling them to narrow the field and choose the best applicant.
However just posting a broad accusation of incompetence without specifics is I think definitely defamatory and possibly actionable. Their facebook page is for them to communicate with their constituents. You are not one so they are within their rights to delete and ignore aggrieved jobseekers.
Points for being entertaining thought Brian, keep it up I love it.
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18 February 2013 at 4:33 pm
I posted the title of my article and a link to the article. Your reductionist and overly literal reading of this is pointless. Considering that you reliably oppose everything I write I may use that to further amuse myself in the future.
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19 February 2013 at 3:08 am
I think you’ll find Brian that the law is overly reductionist and frequently quite literal. If you don’t provide a context then defamation law wont assume one for you.
I don’t generally comment when I agree with you. I enjoy your food reviews and your comments on street art and also your opinion on local issues such as public toilets and infrastructure. To be honest I find you a pretty interesting sort of character, you write well have interesting opinions and seem generally passionate about a lot of really interesting topics. Then you have you ‘dont suffer fools’ side where you responses are in my opinion disproportionate and often seem quite angry. For someone who has an excellent understanding of how social media works its strange that your don’t, in my opinion have the same level of self awareness regarding how your own writing reflects on you. I wouldn’t put you in charge of a coffee cart I’d be too afraid you’d yell at the customers who forgot to tell you if they wanted sugar. 80% of people are a complete pain in the neck but you spend all your time telling them they are you’ll never get anything done and everyone will think you’re a bit mean for pointing it out. I’m going to read food blogs and leave you alone for a few weeks. I’m not trying to troll you but you seem to be getting a bit annoyed so I’ll leave you alone.
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19 February 2013 at 3:28 am
You can only conceive of a literal reductionist reading of who ‘I’ am. ‘I’ am not the persona telling the story. The persona narrating rants about social injustices like how workers are regularly humiliated by employers cannot be simply understood as ‘me’. I explained years ago that this narrative persona is a deliberate construct.
As explained in the sidebar, this site contains ‘reflections on life from a socially libertarian, economically socialist, culturally anarchistic and radically individualistic point of view.’ I’m not writing like this to be liked. I’m writing to express a particular worldview. Your inability to understand this is not my problem.
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19 February 2013 at 11:11 am
Billy C has a point, Brian.
The original statement suggesting incompetence was clearly referring to their HR procedures and your experience of them. If you wanted to use the truth as a defence in this circumstance you’d have to establish that what they were asking you to do was in fact not part of their policies (ie: they were incompetent because they did the wrong thing in part of their employment procedures.) To establish ‘incompetent’ you need to establish what ‘competent’ is, right?
The problem is, of course, that you can’t tell what City of Moreland’s employment procedures or policies actually are, and you can’t tell what constitutes ‘competent’. They may have been following them to the letter. Your suggestion they performed their job incorrectly was an assumption, and depending on what their actual policies are it may have been a grossly inaccurate one at that.
Using an example of a Facebook page that’s inadequately vetted is comparing apples to oranges – for one, that’s an entirely different part of their business, and again, you don’t actually know their policy on answering Facebook posts anyway – it’s only an assumption.
I find it baffling that you not only made what any reasonable person could consider a vague defamatory comment against them, but then proceeded to email them and direct them straight to your blog post containing such a comment.
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19 February 2013 at 11:20 am
They outlined a procedure for the recruitment of the role in the ad – submit a cover letter, selection criteria response and CV and you will be judged on that. They later changed the rules for no good reason in a manner that could only delay and confuse the process, not improve it. I call that incompetent. Competent would have been following the process they had originally established and treating the applicants with some professional courtesy.
The point about the Facebook page is that I demonstrated that whoever was administering it was not doing a very good job. The role I applied for included working on social media, hence I was indicating that I could do better. Their policy on answering Facebook questions is evidently inadequate because they continue to deliver poor customer service there.
Why did I draw their attention to my criticism of their behaviour? Because I am holding them to account and they need to be aware of how their unprofessional behaviour has affected the many applicants for the role, including me. Applicants don’t appreciate having their time wasted.
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