Word: libelous
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This continual battering creates a dilemma for the University administration. It can fight back, vigorously denying the charges and in some cases suing for libel, or it can maintain the traditional Harvard air of detachment. In the past it has chosen the latter course, but recent attacks by McCarthy and other self-appointed red hunters again pose the problem of how to deal with slurs most effectively...
...whole, Rushmore is super-cautions, making few of the accusations himself and dealing only in veiled insinuation. He firsts with libel without actually opening himself to suit. But at one point he does slip badly. Late in the article he boldly announces, "There is an organized Communist movement at Harvard," using for evidence only the testimony of former FBI undercover agent Herb Philbrick and former Communist Bella Dodd that there was a cell of professors here during the 1930's and '40's. The earlier existence of cells is now recognized as a fact, but it would be difficult...
This slip is genuine libel. The libel laws provide that defamatory criticism of educational institutions--including the quality, character and method of their instruction--is permitted since they are institutions in which the public has a "substantial interest." But it also provides that such defamatory criticism, that is criticism which holds the institution up to "ridicule, hatred or contempt," must be based on true facts. The burden of truth lies with the defendant in the libel suit...
...picture has three problems: to 1) find somebody to impersonate the entertainer who not only looks like him but can act like him too; 2) inject a little drama into the dull routine of success; 3) follow the facts of the subject's life without bringing on a libel suit...
...sometimes transcends comic writing, and his description of an offshore rescue by the local Coast Guard men during a hurricane is a model of exact reporting. The Bright Sands takes few fictional liberties with its natural setting. Those it takes with its characters keep Taylor well this side of libel, but won't stop the guessing games around Cape Cod stoves during the off season...