nedosionist

Your post/discussion raise the question: does hearsay have the right to exist at all? By Halakha, it kind of seems not to. Definitive or not, the halakhic verdict IMHO admits of an exception for a private conversation of close friends/relatives. In such a case, a hearsay has all the necessary complements (the audience's awareness of subjective context and its ability to correctly evaluate the objective amount of information) to be perceived for what it is. By contrast, in public discourse, the amount of information tends to be exaggerated on each receiving end; which, by a chain reaction, may inflate to a conspiracy theory or the like. (Interestingly, even a very critical audience like your opponent may unwittingly contribute to the inflation.)