Word: libelous
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...time for a feast," So declared New York Lawyer Floyd Abrams last week after the Supreme Court handed the U.S. press its first major libel victory in more than a decade. The case involved Consumers Union, the publisher of the product-rating magazine Consumer Reports (estimated circ. 3 million). The nonprofit organization had lost a $210,000 libel judgment to Bose Corp., a Massachusetts electronics manufacturer, for a 1970 article that criticized one of the firm's loudspeakers. A federal appeals court overturned the award in November 1982. The Supreme Court upheld that decision...
...defending the right of free expression in published criticism, the court reassured journalists and lawyers who feared that the Justices might undermine their 1964 ruling in New York Times vs. Sullivan. That decision established that to sue journalists for libel, public officials-later extended to public figures-must prove "actual malice," meaning that statements were made with the knowledge that they were false, or with reckless disregard for the truth. Said Rochester, N.Y., Libel Attorney John McCrory: "We were all terribly worried that the court was ready to repudiate Sullivan by abandoning it as a standard, or eroding it." That...
...ruling was also a relief for reviewers. Last December a Manhattan jury awarded libel damages to a restaurateur who sued a publisher over an article that criticized his food. That verdict seemed to threaten all critics whose reviews are less than glowing. Had last week's Supreme Court decision gone the other way, says William Rice, editor of Food & Wine magazine, "it would have caused us a great deal of hesitation and soul searching in terms of what we could and should print...
...News, the struggle to defend its controversial 1982 documentary The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception appears to be, like the war itself, a conflict of attrition fought on more than one front. It is still several months before the $120 million libel suit that General William Westmoreland filed against the network as a result of the broadcast is scheduled to come to trial. But last week CBS was engaged in a heated exchange with Macmillan, the publisher of a new book about the documentary, titled A Matter of Honor...
...Martin Countian seeks to be judged by its enemies, and the paper has them: it has been sued seven times for libel but has yet to lose a case. Marcum has been punched by people he wrote about and arrested on charges that were quickly dropped. Says he: "Martin County is a good example of what can happen to a place when it receives no media attention. That is the breach I stepped into...