Libel and rumors

One of the ways news organizations thread the needle on libel laws is to report what other people say. For instance, Richard Jewell had a horrible time winning in court against newspapers because they reported that police suspected him in the Olympic park bombing in 1996. Which was true. Police did suspect him.

Just recently, the New York Time has done something similar to John McCain, a politician I don’t really like. The Times wrote that McCain campaign staffers in 2000 suspected an affair with a lobbyist. Which is probably true.

But in both thee cases, the intent of the reporting is not to report that there are rumors. The intent is that just maybe possibly the rumors are true. And there’s little a target can do about it, particularly if they are a public figure like courts ruled Jewell was (I disagree) and McCain obviously is.

I think it sucks that news organizations can avoid liability for the harm this causes to the targets. They get to say we didn’t report that this happened. we reported that there’s a rumor. It particularly sucks when the news uses anonymous sources. don’t sue us, sue the people who actually aid it. That is nearly impossible when the sources are anonymous. The mainstream media clams up and says we can’t tell you who it is to sue though we were integral in spreading the libel.

There’s something to be said for protecting the media from suit. We want a free media. However, I think we need a way to keep such libels in check. Perhaps open them up to lawsuit with a safe harbor if they report every investigative step they took to verify the truth of the allegations. I.e., if they actually include something like we did X, Y, and Z, and after all that we found no evidence to back up the rumor. Current law allows them only to be sued for failure to check the truth only on first level facts. That needs to be expanded to facts reported by reference for want of a better term.

Or perhaps there’s another way. But it’s clear to me that the current limitations allow much more smearing than is healthy.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *