Libel, Accountability Standards for Media May Be Due for Reexamination, Professor Says

By Mark Tapscott August 13, 2020 Updated: August 13, 2020

 When Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas concurred in February 2019 in denying Katherine McKee’s request for a review of her status as a “limited public figure,” he included an observation that shook the mainstream news media.  McKee, who had claimed comedian Bill Cosby sexually assaulted her years ago, sued him for libel after Cosby’s lawyer publicly accused her of dishonesty.

A lower federal court ruled against McKee, claiming that, as a limited public figure, she had failed to prove, as required by the 1964 Supreme Court decision of New York Times v. Sullivan, that Cosby’s lawyer knew his accusation was false but said it anyway.

Thomas, currently the high court’s longest-serving member, declared that federal courts “should reconsider the precedents that require courts to ask [if a plaintiff is a public figure] in the first place. New York Times and the Court’s decisions extending it were policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law.”...........To Read More....

Christine Ford, Justin Fairfax, and Me

February 20, 2019 By David Horowitz

When it was reported that the law firm of Ballard Spahr was representing Justin Fairfax, the Virginia Lieutenant Governor accused of raping two women, several bells went off in my head. I knew Ballard Spahr had also represented the serial liar Christine Blasey Ford in her attempt to destroy the reputation and career of Brett Kavanaugh. But I was also familiar with Ballard as the firm that represented the once-liberal organization Common Cause in its attempt to tar me as a “white supremacist” and “sexist,” and destroy my own reputation.

This effort was particularly instructive in revealing the dangerous mentality behind the blacklist, and the menace it poses not only to conservatives like myself, but to the future of our democracy............

When my lawyers sent a letter to Common Cause demanding a retraction for slandering me as a “white supremacist” and “sexist,” a Ballard Spahr lawyer named Seth D. Berlin replied: “Common Cause declines to do so. 

Common Cause’s characterizations of your clients’ ‘ideas’ and ‘rhetoric’ as ‘white supremacist,’ ‘racist,’ ‘sexist’ and the like, are fully protected expressions of its opinion.”

This was true. Since 1964, slandering a public figure – defaming him without evidence - is protected by the Constitution as per a decision of the Supreme Court in NYTimes v. Sullivan.[10] This decision is responsible for the debased state of our current press since it has relieved media institutions of their legal liability for making false and character-damaging statements about public figures they oppose. Slander has consequently – and disastrously -- become the common currency of the Fourth Estate.

I already understood these facts but had asked my lawyer to send the letter anyway, knowing we did not have a legal case. I saw it as an appeal to the conscience of the Common Cause executives to look at what I had actually said and voluntarily take an action that would repair some of the damage they had done to my reputation...........Read more