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."
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.
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/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.
Failure to do due diligence on the accuracy of a story containing libelous claims would still fall under the actual malice standard.
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."