What was once ordinary gossip, whispered in a room or traded between neighbors, has been industrialized. It now comes with cameras, studios, budgets, background music, and the respectable language of “investigation” and “public interest.” The result is a strange moral imbalance: a private individual may sue over defamation, but entire systems can repeatedly smear a public body, a government, a ministry, a police force, a religious community, an army, a municipality, or a soci