While we were at work or school this morning, our president
tweeted: “The failing @nytimes has disgraced the media world. Gotten me wrong
for two solid years. Change libel laws?”
So, what does he mean? He means to silence our free press.
Libel
law pre-dates the founding our the United States.
It is a compendium of many hundreds of court rulings that signify a trend. In the U.S., libel is used to provide
damages to someone whose reputation is measurably injured by a malicious
falsehood that is communicated to the public (the law refers to this as “publication”).
The U.S. has the most freedom on the planet to speak. We err
on the side of shielding speakers who are stupid, hateful, ignorant, biased, unfair, irresponsible—we draw
the line with “malice,” a tough standard to prove—and we also allow “truth” as
a defense.
In a landmark case in
1964— New York Times Co. v. Sullivan— the Supreme Court made it extremely hard
to win a libel suit against the media. Today, for Donald Trump to win a libel
suit against the NYT or Washington Post or CNN, he’d need to prove the media
outlet knew the information was wholly and patently false or that it was
published "with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not."
Getting information wrong is no cause for libel.
Media bias
is no cause for libel.
But Donald Trump’s tweet today is cause for great alarm. If
our nation allows The Donald or any other elected official to win a lawsuit for
libel against a news outlet—even Breitbart— we will lose an essential feature
of our democracy.
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