Still, Edwards is already denying the Enquirer’s latest report. During a brief conversation with The Daily Beast, a family spokeswoman said of the report of the upcoming nuptials, “I can tell you that it’s not true.”…

According to another tabloid veteran who spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity, The Enquirer has been running iffy stories about the supposed engagement of celebrity couples ever since the days of founder Generoso Pope, largely because such pieces are among the easiest to get away with. “The great thing about ‘to wed’ stories is that they’re ‘libel proof,’” the source explained. “All of the tabloids did stories saying Brad and Angelina were going to get married. At [several of these magazines] whenever sales were slow, an Oprah/Stedman story would appear. I bet they were ‘to wed’ 20 times.” The Enquirer’s Levine insisted that “we view every story, and our lawyers view every story, in the same way: They all have to stand up in terms of the sourcing and the vetting process.”

Still, it is true that engagement stories are pretty much libel-proof. “Innocuous things like marrying another consenting adult don’t provide a basis for a libel suit,” said Kelli Sager, a First Amendment lawyer with Davis Wright Tremaine who has represented such media organizations as the Los Angeles Times and CBS. “For someone to win a libel suit [in the United States], the allegedly false thing must cause people to think less of you. It has to hurt your reputation. If you are said to have stolen money or taken illegal drugs, those are things libel law addresses, not facts that happen simply to be false. ”