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Re: Lou's reply to gardengirl- » Lou Pilder

Posted by Atticus on December 6, 2004, at 23:37:55

In reply to Lou's reply to gardengirl- » gardenergirl, posted by Lou Pilder on December 6, 2004, at 6:45:27

Lou,
As a former professional journalist with a journalism degree and experience teaching First Amendment law, let me clear up a few things here. First, the First Amendment is there to prevent the GOVERNMENT from censoring privately published material that it finds offensive or embarrassing. The key case here is the landmark 1964 New York Times v. Sullivan one, which essentially cemented the idea that a citizen of the United States CANNOT be sued for criticizing the government or government officials on the municipal, county, state, or federal level. And the government CANNOT censor the free speech of citizens. But it has nothing to do with libel cases involving one private citizen criticizing another. There are separate libel laws for those kinds of situations. But here's a quick example of the difference. A public university, which is considered an extension of the state government where it is located, cannot censor the student newspaper. It is a clear First Amendment violation. However, a private university can censor the student newspaper to its heart's content. The First Amendment is primarily designed to facilitate the robust exchange of political and social ideas (including and especially those that the administration may not cotton to) without GOVERNMENTAL interference or repression. That's the theory as outlined by Jefferson, anyway. Certain presidential administrations have shown little understanding or respect for this idea, which is essential to a functioning democracy.
As far a libel law goes, it's extremely complex (takes weeks to teach it), but in regard to media such as newspapers, if an opinion column is factually accurate and located in a section of the newspaper that a "reasonable person" understands to be a forum for the exchange of opinions (i.e., editiorial page, letters column, op-ed page), and not in a section that a reasonable person understands to be a forum for straight factual news (i.e. the front page), then insulting words are free to fly. Happens every day. And satire (i.e. editorial cartoons) has also been considered protected speech since Falwell v. Hustler. In fact, the first editorial cartoon ever published in the U.S. was written and drawn by none other than Ben Franklin.
The U.S. Supreme Court has historically set the bar extremely high for people suing for libel; it considers the protection of unfettered information to be that important. And consider: the Founding Fathers all thought free speech was so critical to the survival of their fledgling experiment in democracy that they made it the FIRST Amendment, not the second or third or fifth. Hope that little bit of info clarifies a few things. Atticus


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