Word: libelous
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Jack Lait, editor of the New York Daily Mirror, and his nightclub columnist Lee Mortimer are old hands at libel. In their first three "Confidential" books they picked up no fewer than six libel suits.* By last week their latest slapdash gutter-side view of America, U.S.A. Confidential (TIME, March 17), was well on its way to outstripping the other three. A $1,000,000 suit brough by Maine's Senator Margaret Chase Smith, for bringing her into "scandals as an associate of and sympathizer with Communists," was the sixth in three months. The others...
...most states of the U.S., it is dangerous for a careless or malicious newspaper to libel individuals, but little risk at all to libel such groups as Negroes, Jews, Catholics. Only three states (Illinois, Massachusetts and Indiana) ban all libels against racial or religious blocs. Reason: most states have wisely decided that a group libel law can be as dangerous a restriction on freedom of press & speech as it is a convenient weapon to shut up hatemongers. Newsmen have generally opposed such laws for the same reason. But last week the U.S. Supreme Court decided otherwise...
Justices Black, Douglas, Jackson and Reed dissented. The law, wrote Black, opens the door to censorship of newspapers, movies, radio, etc. "Sugar coating" the law, he said, by calling it a "group libel law . . . does not make the censorship less deadly." The minority was joined by a chorus of newspaper editorials. Said the Washington Post: "The court's decision . . . raises a disturbing question as to where such censorship will end." Added the Chicago Tribune, which rarely sees eye to eye with the Post: "The Illinois statute . . . could be interpreted to outlaw books and plays about Okies. To call something...
According to Budenz, "in every case a suit for libel would be started, not necessarily to win it, but to bleed the accuser white...
Speaking before the New England Congress of the National Federation of Catholic College Students, Budenz said that the decision to use the libel weapon was made before he left the Communist Party...