Penal Code: What’s the best punishment for defamation?

Defamation is not innocent and unwitting use of false information to damage someone’s reputation. It is the use of information the defamer knows to be false with the express malicious intent of injuring the reputation of the defamer’s target. Therein lies the criminality: malicious intent. If it is absent, the unknowing use of false information, even when it damages the reputation of the subject, is not defamatory.