Good day all. After overturning Roe due to the questionable constitutionality of the original Brennan decision, returning the whole mess to the legislatures, (Where it belongs), Justice Thomas is looking at another ruling that is very questionable under the Constitution of the United States, New York Times Co. v. Sullivan.
The Sullivan decision was issued way back in 1964. This decision basically allows the Main Stream Media to lie with impunity regarding public figures and organizations. This makes it almost impossible to sue them when they intentionally misrepresent facts and damage a person or company’s reputation. Justice Thomas would like to see a case come up before the court so they could review it. Here are the details from the New York Post:
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas signaled his willingness on Monday to undo a 1964 ruling that makes it difficult to sue media outlets for libel. The conservative justice, who was one of five votes to overturn the landmark abortion ruling Roe v. Wade on Friday, issued a dissenting opinion after the high court refused to hear a case brought by a Christian group that sued the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Coral Ridge Ministries Media filed suit against the SPLC, a left-leaning watchdog, after it labeled the Christian organization a hate group. The lawsuit sought to upend the precedent established by New York Times v. Sullivan, the 1964 court case which set a high bar for public officials to sue for defamation.
“I would grant certiorari in this case to revisit the ‘actual malice’ standard,” Thomas wrote in his dissent.
The SPLC was once a decent group that went after the KKK. (The Democrats no longer needed them) Since the Ku Klux Klan is basically defunct, the SPLC really had no reason to continue. So the created one. They now accuse anyone or any group that doesn’t toe the Progressive Liberal line of being a hate group. Their accusations have resulted in one communist nutbar shooting up an office.
The Supreme Court decided Sullivan in 1964, after a federal district court in Alabama found that a civil rights organization’s ad in the New York Times had damaged the reputation of an Alabama sheriff who was identified by implication in the ad. Sullivan established a higher standard for public officials and public figures to prove defamation of character.
And that is not fair. It’s part of the two-tier justice system the Progressives have been setting up for decades.
They would have to prove actual malice on the part of the accused defamer, that the publication had acted with “reckless disregard for the truth.”
The problem these days is that standard is almost impossible to prove. The only way would be to find a “Smoking gun” as it were, such as a memo, email or recording. (Project Veritas is quite good at getting leftist media scum to admit they are rigging stories, which is why the DoJ, acting as the Biden Secret Police, is after them) The last case to come up before the court was turned away, wrongly in the opinion of Justice Thomas.
Last year, Thomas also called on his colleagues on the bench to review the “actual malice” standard after the court refused to take up a similar case. The son of the former prime minister of Albania sued the author and publisher of a book that served as the basis for the film “War Dogs,” which tells a story about international arms dealers.
I remember that movie, although I didn’t read the book.
Shkelzen Berisha, the plaintiff, accused author Guy Lawson, who wrote “Arms and the Dudes: How Three Stoners from Miami Beach Became the Most Unlikely Gunrunners in History,” alleging that he was wrongly linked to the illicit arms trade.
“The lack of historical support for this Court’s actual-malice requirement is reason enough to take a second look at the Court’s doctrine,” Thomas wrote in his 2021 opinion.
“Our reconsideration is all the more needed because of the doctrine’s real-world effects. Public figure or private, lies impose real harm.”
One person who would love to hammer the MSM into the pavement is Raymond Donovan, the Secretary of Labor under Ronald Reagan. He was accused, charged, tried and acquitted of a larceny charge in New York. Once he was cleared by the Jury, he came out of the court room and asked:
“Which office do I go to get my reputation back?”
As I recall, he was hammered in the press. Another person who was libeled was Nick Sandmann. He was pilloried in the press and accused of being a racist and of going after someone in Washington. A doctored video was presented “Proving” that Sandmann was the instigator. Many people, including all the usual suspects in Hollywood, tore into him.
However, when the full video came out, it showed that Sandmann was not the instigator, but the other people were the ones who went after him and his classmates. One notable person was Jamie Lee Curtis. She went after Nick Sandmann on the basis of the edited video. When she saw the full video and learned that he was not at fault, she publicly apologized. A number of news organizations, CNN being one of them, not only didn’t, but doubled down.
Nick Sandmann sued a number of organizations, CNN being one of them. Several of the big name media groups, CNN being one of them, settled the cases. While there are Non-Disclosure Agreements in place, some of the louder mouths at CNN, while not saying the actual amount, implied it was really big numbers. Several public figures have also been sued. One that wasn’t was, Jamie Lee Curtis. Her apology was accepted since it was made in good faith and that she was also the victim of intentionally bad information.
One of the things that the lawyers for the news companies tried to do was have the cases against them dismissed on the ground that Nick Sandmann was a public figure. He wasn’t and was dragged into the limelight by the media. The Sullivan decision was not applicable in his case.
The Sullivan decision does need to be reviewed, badly. I fully support a free press, but there has to be boundaries. It’s one thing to make an honest mistake, that happens all the time, and an honest reporter will admit the mistake, explain how it was made and apologize. This is usually the end of it.
However, the media today has become nothing more then a propaganda tool for the Democrat Party. They have been caught repeatedly making up stories about public figures, usually conservatives or Republicans, and their targets have been unable to do anything about it all due to the Sullivan decision.
Justice Thomas is correct that it needs to be reviewed and overturned. If a story is untrue and the writers made an honest mistake, then correcting the mistake and making it known should take care of most instances. The truth, of course, is an absolute defense in the United States. If the facts are proven to be true, then libel hasn’t happened. (In Eurostan, the Truth is not an acceptable defense) If the journalist and/or organization just made things up, then they need to be hammered into the ground.
Thatisall
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