Word: libeling
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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...
...told a Law School Forum audience he supports the Court's ruling last month that a reporter must reveal his state of mind when writing an article that is later challenged in a libel case...
...many court watchers believed that reasoning would stand up in the Supreme Court. Writing for the majority, Justice Byron White asserted that the press already has a great deal of protection against libel suits. Ever since the landmark New York Times vs. Sullivan case in 1964, public officials-and, since 1966, public figures like Colonel Herbert-must prove "actual malice." That means that a journalist consciously lied or had serious doubts about the accuracy of his report. Sullivan thus made it essential to focus on the reporter's state of mind, argued White. Apparently, he added, no journalist...
...fair game in libel cases, says the Supreme Court...
...access to journalists' phone records, and in a decision that shocked many reporters, upheld a surprise police raid of a newspaper office. Last week the high court ruled 6 to 3 that newsmen must answer questions about what they were thinking when they prepared reports that resulted in libel suits. "The courts can take your notes, the Government can take your telephone records, and the police can march into the newsroom," said Jack Landau of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "Now libel lawyers can go into your brain. I'd like to know what...