Word: libelous
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Peron actually spoke most of her lines). "Dramatizing Larry Flynt was walking a tightrope--include too many contemptible events, and the audience turns off," concede the film's screenwriters, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, in an introduction to the published version of their script. Its climax revolves around the libel suit filed against Flynt by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, which led to the famous 1988 Supreme Court decision saying it's O.K. to poke fun at public figures, even to say--as Hustler did of Falwell--that they have sex with their mothers in outhouses. I, for one, am grateful...
Your assessment of the Jewell case shows the extraordinary one-sidedness of the media. It seems everyone involved--except the press--was guilty of poor judgment, possible rights violations, skulduggery and potential libel. The media use the First Amendment as a shield for their lack of ethics, their use of yellow journalism and their reporting of rumors with reckless disregard for the damage caused to the people involved. ROBERT V. RIGHTER JR. St. Louis, Missouri...
...newspaper reporters go out of their way to make magazines look trivial, and magazine copy-editors clip the "Corrections" columns from the papers and send them to their friends for fun. It had never occurred to me that by tossing words into the wind, I was really flirting with libel...
Jewell may have a hard time winning a libel suit, because he would have to prove that something written or broadcast was false. If a court decides that Jewell is a public figure, he will also have to prove that the falsehood was intentional or made in reckless disregard of the truth. This issue of whether Jewell is a public figure is "a tough borderline case," says Vincent Blasi, a First Amendment expert at the Columbia University School...
...fact, Jewell's lawyers say they plan to file libel actions, in which they may have little chance of prevailing. Attorney Wayne Grant insists, however, that "we will win these lawsuits. This is not a p.r. campaign." Yet it will certainly feel like one. Libel cases are a "nightmare" for the defendants, notes Blasi. "You lose them even if you win them." Already the reputations of the FBI and the press are suffering, and Jewell has been able to turn the media megaphone around to declare his innocence. You almost wish he'd quit now. Sign a lucrative book...