different kinds of news?

The person called Sarah Hamilton, who wrote the email I reproduced in my last post, says that the hate piece published about me by the Reading Evening Post was "not a news story".  I have never really got this.  Do you think that when people read a newspaper and turn to a "diary" or other "light-hearted" item they make the mental adjustment "This Story Is Utter Bollocks".  "This Story Is Not True".  "The People Who Wrote This Don't Really Think This".  I do know that when a former colleague was subjected to a long-term campaign of personal vilification by the odious Matthew Norman in the even more odious Guardian she couldn't legal him, because what he wrote was "light-hearted diary items".  She got him in the end, when he put something similar in what purported to be a "serious" story.  But readers don't make that distinction.  They really don't.  And the writers surely know this.  So, readers of the Reading Evening Post, and any misguided souls who read the Guardian, please remember that a "diary" piece may be all lies.  And that's just fine, says Ms Hamilton.