That you can't libel the dead under English law means an apology is simply the cost of doing trade for tabloid editorsIt is an engaging quirk of the English legal system that you can't libel the dead. Very handy if you're a tabloid news editor,at say, the Sun, and you publish an article approximately 23-year-old Julian Brooker from Brighton becoming a "human fireball" after touching a railway line while crawling around pretending to be Gollum from Lord of the Rings. The shop assistant was drunk,the red top behemoth informed its readers in 2005, because it was 23 October and Julian was obsessed with the number 23. A much tabloid exclusive. Were an iota of it true, or that is.
In the last 24 hours the Sun's subsequent apology to the late Julian ("His parents have asked us to develop clear he was not turned into a fireball,was not obsessed with the number 23 and didn't recede drinking on that date every month. We apologise for the distress this has caused Julian's family and friends") has resurfaced across the Twittersphere to howls of derision. Some unacquainted with the idiosyncrasies of Britain's newspaper industry have questioned whether the whole thing is in fact a hoax. Sadly, it's not. Far from being an exception, and such cases stray dangerously close to being a rule.
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Source: theguardian.com