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orielwen comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 8 - Less Wrong
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Two ideas that came to me overnight:
Fred and George convinced Rita Skeeter by... not convincing RIta Skeeter. Someone polyjuiced as her went to the Daily Prophet offices announcing their amazing new story.
Eventually someone will be an animagus who turns into a human. Probably not Harry, as it would seem repetitive for him to have both a human patronus and a human animagus form.
Fred and George didn't do it. They planted a story about Quirrel. Quirrel read the story and, seeking a way to get back at Skeeter, found out that Fred and George were trying to get back at Skeeter on Harry's behalf – but not that they had planted the story about Quirrel. So he offered to help them, and set everything up for Skeeter, then wiped their memory of everything they'd done to plant the story, which included the memory of planting the story about Quirrel.
Not convinced - Quirrel said he'd have trouble arranging a small portion of the evidence Skeeter saw. Obviously we don't have to believe that, but EY's general setup makes me think it's something Fred and George did.
I wouldn't take at face value anything Quirrel says that's not in Parseltongue. And even then with a pinch of salt: it might be that it's simply harder to lie in such a non-human language rather than there being any actual magical constraint.
I still can't see how publishing a stupid and incorrect story would have been reason enough to make people assume that Rita Skeeter had gone into hiding lest she faced Malfoy's punishments.
Canon!Skeeter would hardly flinch at publishing bullshit stories, and I don't recall hints in MoR that that trait was different - hell, she says her paper regularly throws around empty accusations of Death-eating, which sounds like a much more dangerous thing to do for a publication than fake marriage tales.
Been a while since I read it, but I got the impression the danger came from offending the Goblins and other major magical institutions. (As far as death-eating goes, both in MoR and canon, the paper is connected to Lucius Malfoy, who would like all accusations of death-eating discredited and made ridiculous conspiracy theories - so he might even encourage obviously false stories. The danger would be libel suits, and those are healable with Malfoy funds.)
The problem with libel suits is that as far as I could tell, there aren't any in the canon wizarding world, as evidenced by Rita Skeeter writing whatever the heck she wanted.
I also thought that her going into hiding seemed like an overreaction, though it could be another example of wizards believing anything. As for legitimate reasons for her running, though, what I got from the story is that the problem is not that this is a bullshit story, or even a really high-profile bullshit story, but that it's a demonstrably false high-profile bullshit story. If she is used as a social weapon and to spread disinformation, being openly proven to lie--or be overly credulous--would be a liability, albeit one I wouldn't think would warrant assassination.
It's a sticky inference to make. Maybe there are no libel laws as you say; or maybe:
Given the uncertainty of the libel suit point, and the canon that goblins are touchy murderous nasty customers, I'd rather point to powerful factions rather than a big libel suit as why people would accept Skeeter hiding or going into exile.
The Malfoys' alleys are people I really wouldn't want to meet in a dark ally.
And Daigon Alley in particular.
(I think wedrifid was suggesting that "alley" should be "ally")
Well yeah, but it's a lot funnier to pretend it's deliberate.
Rita Skeeter says that if Quirrel was a real Death eater, the paper never would have actually printed it.