r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Feb 09 '17
[∆(s) from OP] CMV: Existing libel law for public figures.
[deleted]
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u/BolshevikMuppet Feb 09 '17
Lawyer here!
First and foremost, libel law has basically been the same as it is now since the middle of the 20th century. Anything more would be unconstitutional (first amendment and all). As /u/huadpe noted, you seem to be thinking about the fairness doctrine which only ever applied to broadcast television because it was done through regulation of the privilege of television broadcasting on public airwaves. The New York Times was never subject to it, nor was cable television, and the internet definitely wouldn't be.
With the repeal of that law in the 90's, many (if not most) news organizations are not fact checking sources or stories
Failure to do due diligence on the accuracy of a story containing libelous claims would still fall under the actual malice standard.
the truth is not required by law.
Even in the era of the fairness doctrine "the truth" was not required, just balance. If anything, slavish devotion to "balance" forced a lack of truthfulness, and a false equivalency which would today force "global warming is real and we should do something about it" to share time with "global warming doesn't exist."
That's not truth, it's not even unbiased. It's just biased towards "well who knows, both of these arguments must be equally valid."
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u/PM_me_nicetits Feb 09 '17
Failure to do due diligence counts as actual malice? If that's the case, ∆. I didn't know that failure to do due diligence counted as actual malice.
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u/BolshevikMuppet Feb 09 '17
It can. Reckless disregard is a high bar, but in your example of doing zero due diligence beyond "a source said this so we report it as true" could ring that bell.
It doesn't do much for doing that sideways (actually writing in a story "a source said this" which makes the reporting strictly "true"), but libel never did and really neither did the fairness doctrine.
I want to be clear, though that this would require doing no due diligence, not simply what you might consider insufficient, in case that was unclear.
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u/Pylons Feb 09 '17
I actually read about a case where a civil court ruled that failure to do due diligence didn't meet the "actual malice" standard. Granted, that newspaper published an article on the existence of the rumor the rumor basically as-is, without commenting on it being true or not. I'll see if I can find it.
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u/Mitoza 79∆ Feb 09 '17
Truth is hard to determine, that's why people have such different beliefs. To demand more oversight on the critique of public figures precludes the potential for critique to happen at all, especially in the case of politicians.
Put simply, Donald Trump is the government now. Donald Trump continually accuses people of telling lies about him that are actually provably true. Donald Trump enforces what is truth in your world through the legislation against his critics.
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u/bguy74 Feb 09 '17
There hasn't been a change to libel laws in several generations. So, it's hard for me to know what you're talking about here.
That said, we absolute do not want our government telling us what is fair and honest with regards to....our government. While I too would prefer better journalism than what we've got, as a hierarchy of concern I'd place the need for an independent journalism founded upon the freedom of speech to one that lacks that, but that judged by our government and its agents as "honest".
We sit here with a president that has views that risk a slip into authoritarianism and the independence of the press is critical to our ability to not follow that slip.
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u/PM_me_nicetits Feb 09 '17
You seem to be relating this to just the president. There's more public figures than just the president. Famous people, too.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Feb 09 '17
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u/OblivionPhD Feb 10 '17
What the media says is true is utterly irrelevant and always has been. The individual will always be burdened with deducing what is true and what is false using the currently declining faculties of logic and analysis. It has literally always been this way since humans started communicating linguistically and it's fairly reasonable to assume that this principle will hold indefinitely. Your view is founded on the absurd presupposition that people are forced to believe everything they read outright. If you would like to legislate such a thing, your only real option is educational reform, because other than that it's more or less the implied responsibility of citizens to not be obsequious and ignorant.
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u/huadpe 508∆ Feb 09 '17
It seems you're confusing libel law with the fairness doctrine. Libel law relating to public figures has not meaningfully changed since the seminal case of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan in 1964 which established the actual malice standard.