I imagine if you have a show like “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”, then being outed as “not gay” might damage your reputation and the marketability of the show.
Because whoever claims he’s gay isn’t responsible for the bigotry of homophobes. Could you not argue that it’s unreasonable for such a rumour to affect his business and that wasn’t the intention, so it’s not illegal? I doubt there would be any case against anyone spreading that rumour if the result of it was zero financial loss, but Tom Cruise was assassinated. Or if you say someone has huge diamond in their house and it gets burgled, are you liable for that burglary in any way? I’m guessing no, so what’s so special about Tom Cruise’s situation where incorrect rumour leads to unfavourable result?
Whether it’s unlawful is a separate question from whether the target has suffered financial damages. If I have been maliciously spreading a false rumor, I probably have committed unlawful defamation, but I indeed might still be able to argue that the target was not damaged. Maybe his career was already on the downswing, or maybe there were already too many other rumors out there.
However, I probably would not be able to defend myself by saying that, yes, his career suffered harm from my false rumor, but the people who stopped going to his movies were intolerant. Suppose that were my deliberate intention – to harm him because I suspected that his audience would abandon him?
The difference with the burglary example is that there’s nothing unlawful about saying that he has a diamond in his house, whereas a maliciously false statement is unlawful in itself.
My question is what’s the difference if it’s not the deliberate intention to harm him? A newspaper is not malicious, it’s just trying to make money by writing interesting stories. It would surely be difficult to argue that it’s malicious to spread a story that someone is gay when it’s difficult to argue to a court that being gay is a negative without appearing to be a homophobe yourself. You could argue that the newspaper still knew people might react negatively to it, but then you argue the same if they reported on Tom Cruise’s amazing diamond collection - that they printed that story expecting someone to break into his house.
Without going into an entire course on libel, slander and defamation, let’s just say that it doesn’t necessarily matter what you or I think is malicious.
New York says the standard is “the minds of a substantial number of people in the community.”
For Texas it’s “public hatred, ridicule or financial injury.”
In California it can be anything that subjects someone to hatred, contempt, ridicule or obloquy [disgrace or ill repute], or which causes someone to be shunned or avoided, or which injures someone in their occurpation.
And the newspaper doesn’t have to be deliberately trying to harm. It can exhibit “a reckless disregard for the truth” which is grounds by itself.
There’s an implied question - should the law consider it defamatory to claim someone is gay? Interestingly, the South African Constitutional Court recently ruled that it should not. It’s a curious ruling, because South African society is still pretty conservative and in practise an accusation of homosexuality could be harmful in many situations.
Tom cruise is as queer as a $3 bill
sue me!!!
Suppose Cruise’s career is indeed hurt by my (hypothetically) spreading a deliberately false rumor that he is gay. Suppose – whether or not you or I think it is just that they do so – a significant chunk of his audience skips his next action movie. He’s suffered financial harm from my false rumor, and someone has to bear that cost. If we say that he cannot sue me, because in an ideal society his audience would not have deserted, then we’re making him a martyr to society’s bigotry and forcing him to bear that cost. Why is that more just than making me, someone who spread a false rumor, compensate him?
[Moderator Note]
Pablo O’Malley, remarks like this add nothing to the discussion and are out of place in General Questions. Since you are new here, I am making this a moderator note instead of an official warning, but don’t do this again.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
PS. I also see you just got another mod note from samclem in another thread. I’d strongly advise you to knock off the immature behavior if you wish to continue to post on this board.
I don’t mean situations where it’s deliberately false, only unknowingly so.
But could you not ask the same question but with the diamond I keep going on about? If you spread a rumour there is a diamond in his house and it gets broken into, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damage…?
Sorry if I seem stubborn, it just seems like the answers I’m getting never entirely answer my question and there’s always a “loophole”. But also maybe I’m just misunderstanding 
Don’t they have any yellow press where you’re from?
In Mississippi, at least, something like that could lead to thecriminal charge of malicious mischief.
Why do you doubt that? If someone maliciously spreads a false rumour, and someone is murdered as a result of the killer’s belief in that rumour, then why couldn’t the rumour-monger be held civilly or criminally responsible? Say you start a rumour that I am a dangerous child molester, and some vigilante therefore tracks me down and beats me to death. The state may well prosecute you for criminal defamation (or worse), arguing that while the vigilante’s actions were indeed unreasonable, they were a forseeable consequence of your defamation. My heirs could launch a civil suit against you on similar grounds and they would have an even lower burden of proof.
Come to think of it, some years ago the Independent of England printed an expose on the Village People: mainly, that only one of them was actually gay. If that had been printed during the peak of their popularity, maybe they would have had a case.
A legal action for defamation isn’t meant to cover all harms that one person might do to another through false statements. Simply put, it’s designed to address harm to another person’s reputation. There may be situations where falsely saying that someone keeps a large diamond in her house does harm her reputation – if I said it about Mother Teresa, for instance, and it caused her to lose donations. But someone breaking in to steal it isn’t doing so because of harm to her reputation.
Also, the law tends to say that an intervening criminal act breaks the chain of causation. Someone breaking into Mother Teresa’s house is an independently criminal act, and whatever harm she suffered from the burglary can be redressed by recourse against the burglar. Someone refusing to see Cruise’s latest movie is not committing a criminal act, and Cruise has no recourse against that person. If that former fan’s decision was driven by a false rumor that I spread, he may be able to recover against me.
And remember that the law allows a broader range of public remarks about a public figure, like Cruise. If I had a reasonable basis for my rumor, I probably can’t be sued successfully for defamation – he would have to show that I knew or reasonably should have known that it was false.
which of the village people was the sodomite? im betting the cop
[Moderator Warning]
Pablo O’Malley, this is your second warning within a few minutes for inappropriate language in General Questions. You have received repeated moderator notes to change your behavior. Any more posts like this will jeopardize your posting privileges.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
What you are talking about it the idea of “proximate cause.” It is the questions of what type of activity is sufficiently close enough to the harm to make that activity actionable in tort. I didn’t understand it before I went to law school, and after three tort classes, I still don’t understand it. 
Tom Tildrum does a good job of attempting to explain it, but courts are all over the place with it, and in reality it comes down to how malicious you were in what you did.
The “supervening criminal act” that he talks about is sometimes the rule, but in other situations it isn’t. Like psychonaut states upthread, if you spread a rumor about someone being a child molester, knowing that it will likely cause him to be assaulted, many courts will hold you liable for that. Some others will cite the “supervening criminal act” standard.
Why did you say that Tom Cruise had a diamond collection in his house? There’s a continuum of reasons from you being a diamond afficianado on one end versus hoping he gets robbed on the other. Wherever the judge/jury thinks you are on that scale will likely be how liable they hold you.