“Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling sues “Daily Mail” for libel

The Daily Mail has recently taken down an online article that was headlined “How JK Rowling’s sob story about her past as a single mother has left the churchgoers who cared for her upset and bewildered,” which was a gross misrepresentation of her comments in the article she wrote for Gingerbread in 2012.

According to the court papers as reported by The Guardian, a Daily Mail journalist did contact Rowling’s representative prior to releasing the article, but he “failed to put to her or offer any opportunity to comment on the allegations he was proposing to publish,” which is “contrary to basic standards of fair and responsible journalism.”

The article, which was also published on two pages of the paper last September, suggested that Rowling had given “a knowingly false account of her time as a single mother in Edinburgh.” The article stated that she had “falsely and inexcusably accused her fellow churchgoers of behaving in a bigoted, unchristian manner towards her, of stigmatising her and cruelly taunting her for being a single mother,” to which Rowling reacted with “great distress and embarrassment.“

Rowling is seeking unspecified damages from the Mail‘s publisher, Associated Newspapers, for publishing the story.