3 Comments

Yep, I remember that movie, "Absence of Malice" - ruining reputations, lives without being accountable especially when proven to be wrong. Life imitating art...

Expand full comment

Remember that the court case which established that standard in libel cases involving public figures was established by the Supreme Court in 1964 with the decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. It seems rather weird to me that the NYT keeps getting itself in the deep weeds as regards libel and defamation cases. When Gobernor Palin brought this case, I suspected that she would not be able to prove actual malicious intent on the part of the Times, although she certainly would, and did, prove it guilty of sloppy, agenda driven "journalism". That, alas, doesn't meet the standard required for the paper to be held liable for its stories on the subject.

So, what we end up with is yet another proof of the biases of the Great American Leftmedia, of which abundant evidence already exists.

Expand full comment

Understand and agree with you. Proving "malicious intent" is a steep uphill climb, and since there is no lower bar related to "impact" for erroneous publication, we get the Harry Reid, "Worked, didn't it?" with no repercussions despite its impact on a presidential election.

Op-ed print (no longer do I call it "journalism"), while its utlitarian end-justifies-means is easily observed for its specific leanings (read: intent), cannot be conflated with "malicious", so they get the protection of the 1st Amendment without its accompanying responsibility in the journalism world to provide information rather than spin and/or outright lies.

Expand full comment