'Her reports were at the best misleading and at worst untrue reports,' Mr McMillan said.

John Merrigan, a partner at Verner, Liipfert, said his client had been put in the impossible position of having to refute untrue reports based on anonymous sources.

Finally on May 24, 2006, the National Post issues an apology for the untrue reports that the Iranian law would "require Jews and other religious minorities in Iran to wear badges".

The News of the World was one paper obliged to apologise, and pay full legal costs, after printing untrue reports of a disagreement between Lloyd Webber and Sarah Brightman during rehearsals for The Phantom ofthe Opera.

"after his ... dissembling fashion offered to have taken me by his hand and I told him he should neither have hand or heart of me for his evil, false and untrue report of me ... to the lord chancellor."

The report said Bernard Moses, who in 1983 was the authority's director of management, acknowledged that he wrote an "an untrue report" for Mr. Koslov's personnel file, saying he was transferred because of a "lack of talent in the area of tenant education."