You can expect the press to close ranks around its own when freedom of speech is threatened, right? Well, maybe not, when the speakers in question are Fox radio hosts and the heavy hand of government is acting under the aegis of campaign regulation. (Ryan Sager, “Seattle, Post Intelligence”, TechCentralStation, Jul. 19). Sager’s blog has further details, here and here. For more on the controversy over a judge’s order that comments by KVI hosts John Carlson and Kirby Wilbur be counted as campaign contributions, see Jul. 11.
Posts Tagged ‘broadcasters’
“Welcome to the Neighborhood” off the air because of lawsuit fears
ABC had a goo-goo impulse: put on a show where three closed-minded families of bigots are exposed to a series of competing diverse families, with the winning family getting awarded a 3300-sq.ft. house in the Austin neighborhood with their new friends. “[W]ith every encounter with these families, the opinionated neighbors’ pre-conceived assumptions and prejudices are also chipped away, and they learn that, while on the outside we may appear different, deep inside we share many common bonds. The judges find themselves learning to see people, not stereotypes.” While it’s probably not a tremendous loss to our society’s future cultural heritage, the show, which was to debut July 10, was cancelled because of fears that it would prompt a lawsuit under the Fair Housing Act. (Lisa de Moraes, “ABC Faces Reality, Pulls Welcome Mat on ‘Neighborhood'”, Washington Post, Jun. 30; Google cache of memory-holed ABC show page).
Trauma reality-TV show
The reality TV show “Trauma: Life in the ER” was filmed at 35 hospitals in 23 states over a five-year period. Now lawyers are pursuing would-be class actions against the New York Times’ television subsidiary, Discovery Communications, and various hospitals claiming that the privacy consent given by patients and family members was defective or obtained under false pretenses. Despite protests from defendants that the issue of validity of consent is intrinsically one that requires case-by-case determination, a New Jersey judge has certified a class action for lawsuits within that state. The judge estimated that the number of potential class members nationwide might reach into the hundreds of thousands. (Charles Toutant, “Hospital Patients Filmed for Reality TV Certified as Plaintiff Class”, New Jersey Law Journal, Jun. 20). Florida Masochist notes (Jun. 24) that a plaintiff’s lawyer suing in Orlando, per the Sentinel coverage, “said the lawsuit doesn’t question the right to broadcast the material, but the filming and production process”. (Pedro Ruz Gutierrez, “Patients sue over TV appearances”, Orlando Sentinel, Jun. 24). That sounds puzzling: if the persons suing aren’t objecting to the broadcast of the material, how seriously were they injured by the alleged affront to their privacy?
Calif.: radio host’s ageism not a civil rights violation
Tom Leykis’s highly successful Westwood One radio show is geared to reach men 25-34, an advertiser-coveted demographic. When Marty Ingels, a 67-year-old talent agent and former sitcom actor (1962’s I’m Dickens, He’s Fenster) called in to the show, he was eventually put on the air, but Leykis launched into a series of japes poking fun at his age. Ingels proceeded to sue under California’s super-broad Unruh civil rights act and its equally super-broad s. 17200 unfair competition law, but an appeals court has now agreed with the broadcaster’s request to throw out the suit as violative of the state’s SLAPP statute, which is aimed at restricting some lawsuits that threaten free speech. (Kenneth Ofgang, “C.A. Rejects Age Bias Suit Over Exclusion From Radio Talk Show”, Metropolitan News-Enterprise, May 31; Ingels v. Westwood One, opinion in PDF format courtesy FindLaw; Silicon Valley Media Law Blog, May 26).
Thank you, Dan Rather
…for helping rid us of the noxious Fairness Doctrine (Thomas W. Hazlett, “Dan Rather’s Good Deed”, Weekly Standard, Mar. 21, reprinted at Manhattan Institute site).
Judge tosses “Fear Factor” suit
“A judge threw out a lawsuit in which a viewer sued NBC for $2.5 million, contending that he threw up because of a ‘Fear Factor’ episode in which contestants ate rats mixed in a blender. U.S. District Judge Lesley Wells called Austin Aitken’s lawsuit frivolous and warned him against appealing.” The handwritten suit (see Jan. 7) was pro se. (“Judge Nixes Viewer’s ‘Fear Factor’ Lawsuit”, AP/Fox News, Mar. 10).
Sen. Stevens: let’s censor cable
“Short version of this column: If the Republicans wish to lose their majority, they can expend great amounts of energy to outlaw soft-core skin flicks on cable TV.” (James Lileks, “Don’t These People Have Better Things to Do?”, syndicated/Newhouse, Mar. 9).
Update: Mississippi “60 Minutes” suit
More than two years ago (see Dec. 16-17, 2002), following a CBS “60 Minutes” installment exposing “jackpot justice” in Jefferson County, Mississippi, two former jurors struck back with an intimidating lawsuit against the network and two local interviewees. Now Ted reports at Point of Law (Mar. 4) that the Fifth Circuit has affirmed the suit’s dismissal by a federal district court; that court “assumed jurisdiction after it found that state defendants had been fraudulently joined in an attempt to defeat federal jurisdiction”.
Arrested Development
In the November 16, 2003, episode of the best sitcom on television, “Arrested Development,” Jason Bateman, playing the protagonist, Michael Bluth, is seen using a defective cooking product manufactured by the family business–and then, as his character is burned by the device, launches into a lengthy tirade of curse-words against the machine, all of which are bleeped. The humor comes from the length of the bleeping (a running gag in the episode) and the reactions of the other characters (as well as the fact that Michael is in the middle of lecturing his son “It’s a poor carpenter that blames his tools for the–” when he burns himself). The Parents Television Council, in an effort to make America safe from humor, decided to guess what that tirade was, produced its own transcript with its imaginary version of the speech, and then promptly complained to the FCC about the “indecent” broadcast. Thankfully, the FCC unanimously denied the complaint, but the government had to pay lawyers to write memos that would help the FCC reach its 20-footnote decision–your tax dollars at work, since there’s no penalty for wasting the government’s time with such complaints. (And a welcome to Defamer and ALOTT5MA readers.)
Zwebner lawsuits on Internet posts
Michael J. Zwebner, the CEO of penny-stock holding company Universal Communication Systems , is unhappy that he’s being flamed on the RagingBull.com message board, run by Lycos. He may have a legitimate beef to some extent; the dozens of John Doe usernames he’s seeking to discover in one lawsuit are being represented by a lawyer, L. Van Stillman, who apparently pled guilty to SEC charges of “pump and dump” schemes. (Then again, UCSY has a fishy 10-K, being forced to admit that their auditors don’t think that the company can be maintained as a going concern. They’ve certainly had some bad luck: UCSY’s 2003 10-K was late “because of a fire at the building which houses the Company’s corporate headquarters”. The most recent 10-Q was late “due to a fire at the corporate accountant’s office”.)
More importantly for our purposes here, Zwebner’s litigation methods, through his lawyer John H. Faro, are questionable. He’s filed five lawsuits in federal court in Miami, against anonymous posters, against Lycos (for, among other things, “trademark violations” for naming a message board after the ticker symbol UCSY), and even a couple of purported class actions. He’s especially upset at one anonymous poster, who has the especially credible username of Wolfblitzzer0 [sic]. So, Zwebner has sued… CNN and the real-life Wolf Blitzer! It seems, according to Zwebner’s view of the world, that Blitzer is supposed to be on the lookout for anonymous posters using similar names, and should be held liable for such posters’ postings when he fails to police the use of such usernames. (Jessica M. Walker, “Executive Faces Uphill Battle in His Suits Over Anonymous Web Attacks”, Daily Business Review, Jan. 28).
A Google search shows that Zwebner seems to have had previous success intimidating posters into silence. Update: Professor Volokh comments.