I was referring to this from your earlier comment:
IANAL, but I don’t think it’s a matter of degrees. Defamation requires saying or writing untrue things about someone. I don’t see how there can be just short of in a binary legal standard. But again, I’m no lawyer and that would be up to a court to decide.
If they broke the law, the public has a right to know so we can hold the agency accountable through public pressure to reform. The article and video may be sensationalist in tone, but that in itself isn’t libel if the facts are correct. The story says she won her lawsuit. It didn’t say if she or the government brought the suit, but presumably the question of defamation would have come up on their side of the arguments if she had in fact done that.
I’m not quite sure why you think she and not the news program was the driving force behind the tone of the piece. I know from personal experience that journalists will routinely select the most sensational things someone says (when they’re not outright making quotes up) and report that. It seems unlikely she wrote the article herself. Which does not mean she disagrees with the writer’s tone.
