Category Archives: Politics & media law

The last time a sitting president sued a newspaper for libel, laughter broke out on the floor of the US Senate.

That was December 15, 1908, when president Teddy Roosevelt sued the  New York World  newspaper after it linked him to corruption over the Panama Canal. Roosevelt ordered federal attorneys to file criminal libel suits against newspapers  all over the country. Democrats were outraged, once they stopped laughing.  One US attorney resigned in protest rather than prosecute Teddy’s critics for libel.

The main target of the suits, New York World newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, famously said:  “He cannot muzzle the World.”  (See Pulitzer’s Reply Dec. 16, 1908)

Roosevelt’s lawsuit,  US v Press Publishing,  used to be considered the “last gasp” of seditious libel.

The US Supreme Court didn’t think much of the suit, handing down a ruling  in 1911 that was only two pages long. The ruling ignored the merits of the case and simply sustained an objection by Press Publishing (the owner of the NY World)  that “the court has no jurisdiction in this case, because there is no statute of the United States authorizing the prosecution.”

The case was thought to be a First Amendment landmark at the time, but it is barely remembered in communications law textbooks today.  After all, what sitting president would lower himself to file such a suit?  Even outright allegations of murder did not tempt President Bill Clinton to wield that cudgel against critics like Jerry Falwell. What president would be so foolish as to sue for libel just because a newspaper published a disagreeable opinion?

Which brings us to Donald Trump, the president who defied expectations. Tump  sued the New York Times  on Feb. 26, 2020, and the Washington Post, on March  3, 2020, for  an apparently disagreeable opinion about Trump’s relationship with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. In the suit, Trump claimed that the Times knowingly published the supposedly false charge that there was a “quid pro quo” with the Russians in return for  their help in the 2016 election.  (The plaintiff’s petition can be read here.) 

This “quid pro quo” was described in  an op-ed written by former New York Times editor Max Frankel and published March 27, 2019.  In the op-ed, Frankel rejected  small concerns about “collusion” with Russia in the Trump campaign. The much larger issue, he said, involved the relationship between Trump and Putin.

(UPDATE: The story continues but the court dismissed Trump’s lawsuit in March, 2021).
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In a victory for First Amendment advocates,  a federal court ruled Dec. 19, 2018  that news articles about the Steel Dossier, which alleges illegal and immoral acts by Donald Trump and his campaign in 2016, were protected by the “privilege” defense against defamation suits.

The dossier (memo) was written by former British Intelligence head of the Russia desk, Christopher Steele and circulated in the months before and after the November 2016 election.   It was  published  January 10, 2017, by BuzzFeed News with the headline:   These Reports Allege Trump Has Deep Ties to Russia.

BuzzFeed cautioned that the dossier  “includes specific, unverified, and potentially unverifiable allegations of contact between Trump aides and Russian operatives, and graphic claims of sexual acts documented by the Russians.”

Although the major subject of the dossier was Donald Trump and his attorneys and advisors, the suit was filed by Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian whose name was peripheral to the events described in the dossier.     

In her ruling, federal judge Ursula Ungaro of  Miami granted a motion by Buzzfeed magazine to dismiss the lawsuit, saying that the press was protected by the legal doctrine of  fair report privilege.   

Privilege is one of three major defenses against libel suits. (The other two are truth and fair comment).   The defense of privilege gives journalists the ability to report on official government proceedings whether or not information in the proceedings is provably true or not.   The doctrine of privilege allows unfettered news reporting of conflicting ideas or versions of events that may surface in trials, executive memos or congressional hearings.

According to a Columbia University Global Freedom of Expression article,  the decision turned on the question of whether the report was an official proceeding.  In many cases, courts have interpreted proceedings to be official whether or not they are open to the public.

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.

US First Amendment guarantees for freedom of speech and press are fairly straightforward  “black-letter law” — That is, they are so well settled in precedent  and statute that they are no longer subject to reasonable argument.

And yet, this year and last,  we have seen a raft of lawsuits apparently filed in the unlikely hope that the Trump administration’s dream of curtailing First Amendment rights will be endorsed by the courts. As Melissa Rosenberg of the Washington Post says:  “Billionaires want to enlist you in their secret plans to take down the press.”   For example:

Fake earthquake: Comedian John Oliver  was sued by coal company owner Bob Murray on June 21, 2017. The libel suit alleged that Oliver “meticulously planned attempt to assassinate the character  of … Mr. Murray.” (See Murray’s brief here).  Murray filed a similar lawsuit in April over a New York Times editorial.  (The Times response is here .)  In both cases, Continue reading →

Ben Eaton, Mary Schaeffer, Esther Calhoun, and Ellis Long (from left to right) successfully asked courts to dismiss the defamation lawsuit brought against them for speaking out about pollution in their town. (ACLU)

In June 2016, four Alabama citizens asked their state courts to dismiss a defamation lawsuit brought against them for criticizing the operations of a waste disposal company.

The courts agreed with the motion to dismiss in February, 2017.

The initial lawsuit was filed April 2016 by the owners of a Uniontown, Alabama waste dump, who alleged that the four citizens had hurt their reputation when they criticized the dump in statements to the media and on their Black Belt Citizens Facebook page.

Among the things that Eaton, Schaeffer, Calhoun and Long  said about the landfill that allegedly harmed Green Group Holdings (according to their court filings):

1. I feel like I’m in prison, we’re suffocated by toxic pollution and extreme poverty. Where are my freedoms? This is an environmental injustice & it’s happening in Uniontown and  everywhere. Its a landfill, its a tall mountain of coal ash and it has affected us. It affected our everyday life. It really has done a lot to our freedom. Its another impact of slavery.
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