The Texas Supreme Court has sent back for further adjudication a controversy in which two newspapers had failed to win a summary judgment motion in a libel case filed against them. It took judicial notice that the trial judge in the case had taken a plea bargain on racketeering charges that included having accepted a $8,000 bribe to rule against the newspapers on the motion [ABA Journal]
Posts Tagged ‘libel slander and defamation’
When prosecutors threaten to sue over criticism
Popehat’s Ken and Ron Littlepage of the Florida Times-Union on Angela Corey, the evidently thin-skinned Florida special prosecutor in the Martin-Zimmerman case. A letter Corey sent to the Florida Times-Union, in Ken’s view, “betrays anger management issues, entitlement problems, a weak grasp of pertinent First Amendment law governing statements of opinion, and a rather frightening attitude from a government official with such power.” Earlier here and here.
FunnyJunk menaces The Oatmeal with nastygram
And Matthew Inman’s retort to attorney Charles Carreon is already assuming mythical Internet status. [Popehat, BoingBoing and more, Kennerly, Ars Technica, Lowering the Bar]
Free speech roundup
- “Is advocating the paleo diet against the law?” [Brian Doherty on N.C. blogger case; earlier]
- Free speech prof Volokh to lend pro bono help in Montgomery County, Md. blogger prior-restraint case [Popehat; earlier here, here, here, and here] Members of Congress want “SWATting” of bloggers investigated [Arlette Saenz/ABC, Politico, Washington Times]
- A FAQ on anti-SLAPP laws [Ken at Popehat]
- Judge tosses World Net Daily suit over birther parody [Volokh, earlier]
- “Britain’s New Libel Bill: Better on Libel Tourism, But Worse on Anonymous Online Speech” [Citizen Media Law] “What Is an Internet Troll?” [Guardian]
- “Doctor sues patient over web comments” [Orlando Sentinel]
- $3 million jury award in libel case against Norfolk Virginian-Pilot [Romenesko]
“Angela Corey threatened to sue Harvard Law over professor’s criticism, educator says”
If Alan Dershowitz’s accusations are to be believed, the Florida prosecutor in the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case behaved in grossly unprofessional fashion. [Jacksonville.com “The Gavel,” more, Jeralyn Merritt/TalkLeft]
“McMahon’s wrestling company threatens JI with libel lawsuit”
World Wrestling Entertainment executive Linda McMahon is again running for a Connecticut seat in the U.S. Senate, two years after she won the Republican nomination for the state’s other Senate seat but then lost badly to Democrat Richard Blumenthal. Chris Powell of the Manchester Journal-Inquirer, a prominent commentator on Connecticut politics, expressed scathing opinions on the type of entertainment purveyed by WWE under McMahon’s leadership, deeming it a “business of violence, pornography, and general raunch.” On Friday a WWE vice president, in a letter sent to news media throughout the state, “threatened the Journal Inquirer with a libel lawsuit.” In response, the newspaper contends that “The programs were issues in the Senate election two years ago and, by distributing its libel lawsuit threat throughout Connecticut’s news media, the McMahon campaign aims to prevent them from being mentioned this year.” [via Jared Eberle](& Rick Green, Hartford Courant)
Free speech roundup
- Boilermaker union president resorts to litigation against satirical site [Levy; another case on demands for disclosure of anonymous commenters] More on ghastly NY bill to strip protection from anonymous online speech [David Kravets/Wired, Daily Caller, my take]
- Defending people like Aaron Worthing and Patterico shouldn’t be a left-right matter [Popehat, Tapscott/Examiner, earlier] Maryland and indeed all states need stronger statutory protection against vexatious litigants [Ace of Spades] And as a longtime Charles Schwab customer I was at first distressed to find the Schwab Charitable Fund on this list, but since the fund is billed as “donor-advised” I take it some Schwab customer rather than the company itself got to choose the beneficiary;
- “Indonesia Prosecution for Posting ‘God Doesn’t Exist’ on Facebook” [Volokh] Curious to see an argument for Euro-style hate speech laws appearing on the Liberty and Law site [David Conway]
- “Cyberbullying and Bullying Used As Pretexts for Censorship” [Bader]
- “EEOC: Wearing Confederate Flag T-Shirts May Be ‘Hostile Work Environment Harassment'” [Volokh, more, Bader]
- Video on new freedom of assembly book [FedSoc]
- Maybe Citizens United turned out so badly for the speech-suppressive side because a government lawyer was imprudently candid before the Court [Jacob Sullum, earlier on Toobin New Yorker piece]
Church’s defamation suit against critic, cont’d
Ken at Popehat has picked up primary documents in the case of the lawsuit filed by Beaverton Grace Bible Church of Beaverton, Ore. against a “former parishioner and her family members for negative online reviews.” Earlier here.
“Beaverton church sues family after they criticize it online””
Among issues in the suit: whether terms like “creepy,” “cult,” “control tactics,” and “spiritual abuse” are defamatory. [Anita Kissee, KATU]
Misleading audio clips and media transparency
In one of the standout instances of media misconduct during the run-up to the recent furor, NBC repeatedly aired, on “Today” and other shows, audio footage misleadingly edited so as to advance the proposition that George Zimmerman was suspicious of Trayvon Martin because of his race [Erik Wemple, Washington Post] While announcing that it had fired the unnamed producer it considered responsible, NBC was less than forthcoming about other details of the scandal, which — as Mickey Kaus points out — may have had a lot to do with its lawyers’ concerns about minimizing a possible defamation payout: “Like other tort laws, libel laws are in practice the enemy of transparency.”
Some have recalled the scandal in which “Dateline NBC” aired footage of supposedly exploding GM cars that in fact had been rigged with incendiary devices. But I’m actually more put in mind of a less celebrated media disgrace from the same era, the Texaco Tapes pseudo-scandal, in which (as I recount here) the New York Times and other outlets avidly promoted systematic misreadings of audiotapes in a hotly disputed racial-bias case, and failed to engage in adequate (or, really, any) soul-searching when the misreadings came to be exposed. In the Martin/Zimmerman case the questionable audio readings included the “two-shot” account influentially advanced by the New York Times when the case first broke nationally, and the supposed racial slur which dominated coverage for a couple of days before being (if the prosecutor’s affidavit is any indication) discreetly laid to rest.
More: Speaking of the New York Times, you have to wonder whether that paper has some sort of stylebook rule requiring it to keep misreporting what Stand Your Ground laws do [Jacob Sullum, more, earlier] And Tom Maguire notes that the paper’s latest editorial appear to be backing off its earlier assertions that the Zimmerman case will hinge on the state’s curtailing of the old “duty to retreat”: “The duty to retreat evidently extends to Times editors.” He also wonders whether, on the much-discussed question of whether Zimmerman flouted the advice of a 911 operator, the NYT editorialists read their own paper. Yet more: Maguire collects the media myths.
I have a new post at Cato rounding up many of my recent writings and broadcast appearances on the subject, under the title, “Why Is Press Coverage of the Martin/Zimmerman Case So Bad?”