Another great example, thank you, and I appreciate your input here. Social media is vicious, unrelenting, and utterly unforgiving. Ruin a person’s career? Ruin their life? Drive them to suicide? Hey, that’s a feature, not a bug!
Not an exaggeration:
No. The first one is a headline that no respectable newspaper would ever print, unless the evidence of lying was absolutely unequivocal. What they might print is a headline and story suggesting reason to doubt the person’s veracity.
Remember this all originated in my expression of doubt that Dykstra was being completely forthright, that there were two sides to the story and that she was likely engaged in exaggeration and omitting important context. The media abounded in such speculation. Whether it harmed her or not is debatable and hard to determine but I never saw any evidence that it did.
But her essay, basically accusing Hardwick of all manner of sexual abuses, certainly harmed him, and was never substantiated. That’s why I’m inclined to Hardwick’s side, not because I happen to be male. Other alleged abusers of women have not only been accused, but have been charged and convicted based on solid evidence in a proper legal venue. They can rot in hell as far as I’m concerned.