Word: libeling
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Easing the way for libel suits...
...more than a decade, the U.S. Supreme Court has been trying to balance the public's right to know and the individual's right to protect his reputation. The court did not want to stop people who had been defamed from suing for libel. But at the same time, it wanted to make sure that the risk of costly libel suits would not prevent the press from publishing stories of public interest. So, in a line of cases going back to New York Times vs. Sullivan in 1964, the court gradually worked out a compromise: it made...
...reside in President Kennedy's appointee, Byron White. (He's not grateful either when newspaper accounts invariably recall that Mr. Justice White was once better known to you and me as Whizzer White, football star.) But each court attempt to redefine the press's responsibility in libel suits or criminal trials isn't necessarily tearing the First Amendment to tatters, neither are "American courts on a rampage" against the press, as former CBS Correspondent Daniel Schorr argues. Critics often lament court decisions for their "chilling effect"-a mealy phrase that should have gone out with...
...Kampelman. It urges the establishment of a professional code of ethics, the use of internal ombudsmen, and passage of antitrust measures to contain the growth of media conglomerates. Perhaps most significant for Sinatra, Kampelman argues for statutory revisions that would make it easier for public figures to win libel suits...
Last month, however, ABC Correspondent Tim O'Brien reported that the court was about to rule that a journalist's state of mind could be probed in libel suits (the court so ruled two days later). O'Brien afterward disclosed that a lower-court decision involving prisoners' rights would be reversed (the ruling has not yet been announced). Chief Justice Warren Burger was so upset over O'Brien's leaks that he did some detective work. The result: last week John A. Tucci, a Government Printing Office employee who sets Supreme Court rulings...