Author Archives: Bill

Why we can laugh at Trump

Posted on December 18, 2018 | Comments Off on Why we can laugh at Trump

Some people are afraid of freedom of speech. Some even think that disrespecting a political  leader shouldn’t be legal.  But there is a long history of  freedom that opens the door  to criticism  about any leader or public figure.  Take the Dec. 16, 2018  Saturday Night Live sketch that used the theme of “It’s a Wonderful Life” (a 1946 movie) to imagine the world if Trump had not won the 2016 presidential election.

In response, Trump tweeted:

✔@realDonaldTrump  A REAL scandal is the one sided coverage, hour by hour, of networks like NBC & Democrat spin machines like Saturday Night Live. It is all nothing less than unfair news coverage and Dem commercials. Should be tested in courts, can’t be legal? Only defame & belittle! Collusion?    
The SNL satire was not flattering, and it’s not hard to see why it might upset someone who was its target, although it was not “news coverage” or a “Dem” commercial.
But to the main point:  Is it legal?  Shouldn’t a system that allows this unfairness be “tested in the courts”?

Actually, as it turns out, it already has been tested, and rather frequently in fact.  The “fair comment and criticism” defense against libel suits goes back for centuries. The freedom to criticize public officials has been a bedrock point of law since the founding of the country, reaffirmed many times in the courts, and it’s amazing and sad that  Trump doesn’t seem to know one of the most basic and profound facts of American history.

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Posted in Politics & media law

Trump’s Russian allies slowly learning US libel law

Posted on October 19, 2017 | Comments Off on Trump’s Russian allies slowly learning US libel law

Oleg Deripaska totally missed the point of US libel law. (Hint: It doesnt exist to punish the critics of the rich and the corrupt).

A libel suit by a Russian billionaire got booted out of federal court Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2017.

Oleg Deripaskaha had sued the Associated Press for exposing his links  to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

US  District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle said  the suit  “cherry-picked sentences” that he wrongly claimed were defamatory even though he “does not dispute any material facts.”     

According to the AP, the story revealed how Manafort, a decade before joining the Trump campaign, had proposed to Deripaska a confidential business strategy to support pro-Russian political parties and to influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and former Soviet republics to benefit Putin’s government.

To recover for libel, a story must be false.

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Posted in Libel, Politics & media law

Constitution Day

Posted on July 18, 2015 | Comments Off on Constitution Day

Remarks on the occasion of RU Constitution Day 2011 

Thank you for coming out this afternoon for a special panel considering the US constitution.

It’s particularly fitting for Radford University since, across the mall, the RU library houses some of the archives of US Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Goldberg, who during his term on the court in the 1960s was an outstanding champion of the First Amendment. In Goldberg’s view the right of free speech was that of “an absolute, unconditional privilege” despite any harm that may flow from excesses and abuses”

Justice Goldberg often reminded us that historically, as a nation, we have a bedrock commitment to the principle of free speech. Continue reading →

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Posted in About

Welcome

Posted on February 16, 2012 | Comments Off on Welcome

Click through to podcasts.

“No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press.” — Thomas Jefferson

Welcome to communications law and ethics, a class that is required for  communication students and that is also recommended for anyone interested in how freedom of speech and press is balanced with the responsibilities of  public communication. Continue reading →

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Protecting Sources

Posted on January 30, 2005 | Comments Off on Protecting Sources

WHY JOURNALISTS HAVE A DUTY TO PROTECT SOURCES

By Bill Kovarik — 07/06/05

A federal court sent New York Times reporter Judith Miller to jail today. She refused to reveal her source for a leak about the Valerie Plame affair.

“If journalists cannot be trusted to guarantee confidentiality, then journalists cannot function and there cannot be a free press,” she told the court a few minutes before they led her away.

The federal prosecutor, Patrick A. Fitzgerald, said Miller was placing herself above the law and threatened criminal as well as civil contempt charges.

The absurdity of the situation — after all, Miller did not publish the information she supposedly received — is beside the point. And the Bush administration has no doubt forgotten by now just how much flak Miller took for them in the run-up to the Iraq war. Critics of the war wish that she, in particular, had been less guillible. Its a mark of just how alienated Bush is from the press that his administration can no longer distinguish friends from enemies.

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Posted in Uncategorized