[AndreaVass]

This is the argument that needs to take place. Over the past several years, I was forced to understand what “publish” actually means in legal terms. Spoke with many lawyers. In the beginning, I was surprised to hear a lawyer refer to sending information in an email to a third party as “publishing” something.

Whenever you communicate information to a third party, you are in fact “publishing” that information, and you become liable if communicating the wrong facts. You don’t have to be a news organization to publish information or to be held liable—I just used the New York Times as an example to help someone imagine what they might think if they read a NYT article and later found out the wrong person was pictured inside of the article.

The truth is, the law applies to every single person/ entity who chooses to publish (communicate or make publicly known to an audience) information. Legally, we are all held to the same standard whether we realize it or not. Some just expect more from a company like Google, or an actual news organization. I hope this makes sense.