Word: libeller
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...people "should regard war as a catastrophe, not an opportunity," helps explain Pearson's unrelenting animus toward Douglas MacArthur, George Patton and James Forrestal. He thought them dangerous men. Back in the '30s MacArthur had sued Pearson for close to $2 million. Pearson got out of the libel suit only after turning up a Eurasian chorus girl whom MacArthur had discarded, and agreeing not to publish, for as long as the general lived, his love letters to her. At Eisenhower's request, correspondents had suppressed the Patton soldier slapping incident; Pearson considered Patton a warrior authoritarian...
Herbert vs. Lando (1979). A libel plaintiff obliged to prove actual malice because he is a public figure has the right to inquire into a reporter's state of mind. Lando's CBS lawyers had argued that such questions could chill the free exchange of ideas in the newsroom...
...been ridiculed as wasteful by a U.S. Senator, a former Government translator who had been cited for contempt for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating Soviet espionage, and a prominent Florida socialite embroiled in a highly publicized divorce were all held not to be "public figures" as libel plaintiffs. The court ruled that someone must "thrust" himself into a prominent public controversy in order to become a public figure. In effect, these decisions made it easier to sue for libel...
...16th century England, editors and "newswriters" were constantly in danger of imprisonment or torture, even of beheading, hanging and burning at the stake, sometimes for refusal to reveal the source of confidential information. Until nearly the end of the 18th century, libel in Britain was readily used to jail journalists and others. John Walter, publisher of the young London Times, was confined for nearly a year and a half to Newgate Prison, from which he managed to run his newspaper...
...newsman's state of mind and his preparations for a story were legitimate subjects of inquiry, this evoked visions of thought police; and yet it was only a consequence of an earlier pro-press ruling that a public figure, in order to be able to sue for libel, must prove "actual" malice and gross neglect on the part of the journalist. Most newsmen do not demand confidentiality of sources automatically, but only when naming sources or delivering notes is not strictly necessary to meet the specific needs of a defendant. (Many judges in fact agree with this view...