{"id":2390,"date":"2017-06-22T16:28:23","date_gmt":"2017-06-22T16:28:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/?p=2390"},"modified":"2017-08-30T12:57:53","modified_gmt":"2017-08-30T12:57:53","slug":"a-busy-year-for-libel-lawyers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/2017\/06\/22\/a-busy-year-for-libel-lawyers\/","title":{"rendered":"A busy year for US libel lawyers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/aw6RsUhw1Q8\" width=\"480\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" align=\"right\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>US First Amendment<\/strong> guarantees for freedom of speech and press are fairly straightforward \u00a0&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Black_letter_law\">black-letter law<\/a>&#8221; &#8212; That is, they are so well settled in precedent \u00a0and statute that they are no longer subject to reasonable argument.<\/p>\n<p>And yet, this year and last,\u00a0\u00a0we have seen a raft of lawsuits apparently filed in the unlikely hope that the Trump administration&#8217;s dream of curtailing First Amendment rights will be endorsed by the courts. As\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/act-four\/wp\/2017\/06\/22\/billionaires-want-to-enlist-you-in-their-secret-plans-to-take-down-the-press\/?utm_term=.4cfa32c0b77e\">Melissa Rosenberg of the Washington Post <\/a>says:\u00a0\u00a0&#8220;Billionaires want to enlist you in their secret plans to take down the press.&#8221; \u00a0 For example:<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #800000;\">Fake earthquake:<\/span> Comedian John Oliver<\/strong>\u00a0 was sued by coal company owner Bob Murray on June 21, 2017. The libel suit alleged that Oliver &#8220;meticulously planned attempt to assassinate the character \u00a0of &#8230; Mr. Murray.&#8221; (See <a href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/3872377-Murray-v-Oliver-Complaint.html\">Murray&#8217;s brief here<\/a>). \u00a0Murray filed a similar lawsuit in April over a\u00a0New York Times editorial. \u00a0(The Times response is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.documentcloud.org\/documents\/3872404-Times-Brief-to-Dismiss-Murray-Suit.html\">here <\/a>.) \u00a0In both cases, <!--more-->Murray&#8217;s\u00a0basic complaint is that Oliver and the Times\u00a0quoted MSHA, \u00a0the federal \u00a0mine safety administration, which said that the deaths were directly caused by unsafe mining practices, and not an &#8220;earthquake,&#8221; as Murray has persisted in claiming, despite repeated contradiction by mine inspectors. \u00a0(See Crandall Creek, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Crandall_Canyon_Mine#U.S._Government_fine\">Wikipedia entry<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #800000;\">Nine seconds of silence<\/span>: Journalist <a href=\"http:\/\/katiecouric.com\/\">Katie Couric<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0was\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/volokh-conspiracy\/wp\/2017\/06\/01\/judge-in-katie-couric-under-the-gun-libel-case-calls-argument-against-background-checks-sophistry\/?utm_term=.ab0cd14a6b1c\">sued by Second Amendment advocate<\/a>s for creative\u00a0editing, injecting \u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=V6_9q8K2VK8\">silence \u00a0<\/a>\u00a0into a news interview\u00a0in a way that \u00a0implied that the question was so tough that advocates had no answer. They advocates actually did answer, although (arguably) \u00a0not directly. \u00a0So the suit alleged that the nine\u00a0seconds of silence were libelous in this context. A judge\u00a0dismissed the suit in late May, 2017.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_2409\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2409\" class=\"wp-image-2409 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/lawwp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/Palin.Targets-300x192.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"192\" srcset=\"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/Palin.Targets-300x192.jpg 300w, https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/Palin.Targets.jpg 485w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-2409\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Palin&#8217;s &#8216;target&#8217; ad<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\"><strong>Palin&#8217;s targeted districts:<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0 Sarah Palin announced <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/news\/sarah-palin-sues-new-york-times-editorial-tying-her-ads-gabby-giffords-shooting-1017312\">a suit against the New York Times in response to a June 14, 2017 \u00a0editorial <\/a>that mentioned\u00a0her ads in connection with\u00a0the 2011 shooting of US Rep. Gabby Giffords. \u00a0The Times editorial,\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/06\/14\/opinion\/steve-scalise-congress-shot-alexandria-virginia.html\">America&#8217;s Lethal Politics, <\/a><\/strong>\u00a0was mostly a comment on the rising level of violence in America, and a response\u00a0to the June 14 shooting of Republican lawmakers who were practicing for an annual charity baseball game. The Times said: \u00a0<em>&#8220;Was this attack evidence of how vicious American politics has become? Probably. In 2011, Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in a supermarket parking lot, grievously wounding Representative Gabby Giffords and killing six people, including a 9-year-old girl. At the time, we and others were sharply critical of the heated political rhetoric on the right. Before the shooting, Sarah Palin\u2019s political action committee <a href=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Politics\/sarah-palins-crosshairs-ad-focus-gabrielle-giffords-debate\/story?id=12576437\">circulated<\/a> a map that showed the targeted electoral districts of Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs.&#8221; \u00a0<\/em>Palin complained, the Times apologized, but Palin continued the suit because, she said, the response\u00a0\u201cdid not approach the degree of the retraction and apology necessary and warranted by The Times\u2019s false assertion that Mrs. Palin incited murder.\u201d<br \/>\nUPDATE: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/08\/29\/business\/media\/sarah-palin-lawsuit-new-york-times.html?mcubz=0\">\u00a0The lawsuit was dismissed Aug. 29<\/a> in a federal court as an &#8220;unintended mistake&#8221; rather than actual malice. Federal judge Jed S. Rakoff wrote:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"407\" data-total-count=\"3241\">\u201cNowhere is political journalism so free, so robust, or perhaps so rowdy as in the United States &#8230; But if political journalism is to achieve its constitutionally endorsed role of challenging the powerful, legal redress by a public figure must be limited to those cases where the public figure has a plausible factual basis for complaining that the mistake was made maliciously.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #800000;\">Pink slime:<\/span> ABC News<\/strong><span style=\"color: #444444;\"> and correspondent Jim Avila are in court in June, 2017, in a jury trial for defamation over allegations by<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/beefproducts.com\/\"> Beef Products Inc.<\/a><span style=\"color: #444444;\"> that<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/thesalt\/2017\/05\/31\/530929894\/pink-slime-trial-begins-but-its-the-news-media-under-the-microscope\"> it is libelous to simply\u00a0use the term &#8220;pink slime&#8221;<\/a><span style=\"color: #444444;\"> when referring to (ahem)\u00a0&#8220;lean, finely textured beef.&#8221; The term pink slime <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/thr-esq\/abc-confronts-beef-companys-lawyer-rush-limbaughs-pink-slime-commments-1015665\">was widely used<\/a><span style=\"color: #444444;\"> \u00a0by many others before a 2012 ABC broadcast. It was used by the New York Times in a 2009 Pulitzer Prize winning story. It was used by \u00a0 right-wing radio ranter Rush Limbaugh in 2012 before the ABC broadcast. It was even used by a public relations firm working for Beef Products itself when\u00a0it created the &#8220;<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pink_slime\">Pink Slime&#8221; Wikipedia page <\/a><span style=\"color: #444444;\">in 2011. \u00a0 UPDATE: \u00a0According to a June 28 Reuters story, <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2017\/06\/28\/meat-processor-in-deal-with-abc-in-pink-slime-defamation-case.html\">ABC and BPI settled out of court,<\/a><span style=\"color: #444444;\"> ending the defamation trial.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\"><strong>Trump:<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0 Melianna Trump, in April 2017, \u00a0managed to extract <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/04\/12\/business\/media\/melania-trump-daily-mail-libel.html\">apologies from the UK-based Daily Mail<\/a> and a US blogger over allegations that she was involved in an &#8220;escort service&#8221; in Ljubljana, Slovenia, before meeting business executive Donald Trump. Following the apologies and a monetary settlement, Mrs. Trump dropped the suit.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\"><strong>Gawker:<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0 Hulk Hogan&#8217;s sex video, when published\u00a0by Gawker web magazine in 2012, \u00a0seemed like a straightforward invasion of privacy in<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bollea_v._Gawker\"> Bollea \u00a0(Hogan) v Gawker <\/a>(2017). \u00a0But it was, instead, a move by a billionaire investor to destroy the publication,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/act-four\/wp\/2017\/06\/22\/billionaires-want-to-enlist-you-in-their-secret-plans-to-take-down-the-press\/?utm_term=.4cfa32c0b77e\">according to Melissa Rosenberg of the Washington Post<\/a>. \u00a0Originally, Bollea lost the first round, with the judge saying that given the degree to which Bollea had already made his\u00a0private life public, the video&#8217;s publication was not a violation of copyright.\u00a0\u00a0But Hogan sued Gawker in a way that circumvented the publication&#8217;s\u00a0libel insurance with the assistance of Peter Thiel, a billionarie businessman who hated the publication. A Netflix documentary, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/entertainment\/archive\/2017\/06\/nobody-speak-trials-of-the-free-press-review-netflix\/531132\/\">Nobody Speak: The Trials of the Free Press<\/a>,&#8221; goes into detail about the Gawker case and its behind-the-scenes financing and maneuvering.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What all of these suits have in common<\/strong> is the assumption by corporations or public people that, one way or another, they can&#8217;t lose. \u00a0If they win, there\u00a0may be a big settlement. \u00a0If they tie (or settle out of court), at least their expenses are paid and they&#8217;ve made their point on the public stage. But even if they lose, they (or their friends) can easily afford the massive expenses of a libel suit, while the media is relatively under-funded.<\/p>\n<p>Taken as a whole, then, these lawsuits represent a new wave\u00a0of attacks on the independent press and the First Amendment.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US First Amendment guarantees for freedom of speech and press are fairly straightforward \u00a0&#8220;black-letter law&#8221; &#8212; That is, they are so well settled in precedent \u00a0and statute that they are no longer subject to reasonable argument. And yet, this year &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/2017\/06\/22\/a-busy-year-for-libel-lawyers\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-libel","category-politics-media-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2390"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2487,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2390\/revisions\/2487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}