Word: libel
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...even casual trial followers are aware that a public figure who sues a newspaper or magazine for libel must prove not only that the story is false but that it was published with reckless disregard for the truth. This test of "actual malice" was meant to safeguard the press, but in practice it has proved a complex standard that is open to wide interpretation by juries. In recent years, seven out of every ten libel cases lost by the media have been overturned on appeal. However, in an unexpected reversal last week, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., reinstated...
...another reversal for the press last week, a federal appeals panel in St. Louis overturned a judge's decision and reinstated a $10 million libel suit by South Dakota Governor William Janklow against Newsweek magazine. In a February 1983 article, Newsweek--which is owned by the Washington Post Co.--recounted Indian Activist Dennis Banks' charge that Janklow had raped a 15-year-old girl, and reported that federal authorities had found insufficient evidence to prosecute. Janklow argued that the article then falsely implied he had prosecuted Banks on riot and assault charges in reprisal for the rape accusation. A federal...
...most changed of the five is Mike Wallace. The long months of the Westmoreland libel trial had their cost. Millions of dollars were at stake. But when the general and Wallace met inadvertently, side by side, at a courthouse urinal, Wallace had the feeling they were "partners in misery." When Wallace got the flu, the general's wife gave him aspirin and apple juice. Wallace also found it unsettling as a journalist to be "on the other side of the scrutiny," with television cameras pursuing him. He is having what he calls sober second thoughts: "My appetite for the hard...
...Valletta to Palermo. He killed one man with a dagger in the groin during a ball game in Rome in 1606, and wounded several others, including a guard at Castel Sant'Angelo and a waiter whose face he cut open in a squabble about artichokes. He was sued for libel in Rome and mutilated in a tavern brawl in Naples. He was saturnine, coarse and queer. He thrashed about in the etiquette of early seicento cultivation like a shark in a net. So where is the mini-series? When will some art-collecting shlockmeister of Beverly Hills produce The Shadows...
...effect, the Sullivan decision has resulted in the very thing it was written to avoid. What it produced has been aptly called Malice in Wonderland. One survey by the Libel Defense Resource Center of cases that resulted in large jury awards for damages shows that four of the ten biggest were brought by public officials, and dozens of suits are pending, at least 18 in Philadelphia alone. These plaintiffs may be responding to a perceived shift in public opinion against the news media, or to a general litigious impulse in our society, or to the publicity given to strikingly high...