Comment by tokenadult | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tokenadult | Hacker News Reader

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That's NOT exactly the legal standard. Before the separation of the American colonies from Britain to form the United States, there was already a defense of truth to libel claims. Say what is true, and libel is not much of a worry to you. (But you can say true things and still be civilly liable for disclosure of trade secrets, or for harming a person's "right to publicity," depending on the facts of a case, and you can be criminally liable for espionage or the like.)

After the independence of the United States, United States law on defenses against libel claims developed some more, so that press reporting about public officials (especially) and even "public figures" (people who are already well known in public activities) can be protected even if reporters make false statements by mishap. For public officials, since my early childhood, the standard has been that "actual malice" (which doesn't exactly mean malice, but complete disregard for attempts to check the factual statements) has to be shown for a journalist to be liable for libel. In some other countries (notably Singapore), libel law can be used to suppress dissent. United States courts have not wanted libel law to work that way.

The practices of tabloid journalists, of course, are despicable, and they are examples of abusing legal precedents originally meant to protect more factual and more fair journalism.

http://www.medialaw.org/topics-page/defamation-faqs

My very limited experience with regular journalism and tabloid journalism is that tabloid journalists are scrupulously factual and accurate, while regular journalists more or less write whatever they want without much regard to whether it is true or even coherent. This makes a great deal of sense if you think about the environment of legal risk in which the respective categories of journalists exist: regular journalists are essentially engaged in stenography for the powerful, flattery for everyone, and providing readers with the cheap illusion that they understand things they don't; meanwhile, tabloid journalists are engaged in viciously attacking the famous.

In short, where you write "protect more factual and more fair journalism", you should have written "protect less factual and more favorable journalism".

>tabloid journalists are scrupulously factual and accurate, while regular journalists more or less write whatever they want without much regard to whether it is true or even coherent

Do we exist in the same universe? When I visit the National Enquirer website, the current headline is "Hillary Clinton Caught With Lesbian Lovers". Meanwhile, the headline on the New York Times is "Cam Trump Win? Here Are the Decisive Battlegrounds".

> "Hillary Clinton Caught With Lesbian Lovers".

Isn't that just like her? And of course she didn't come out for gay marriage until 2013. What a hypocrite.

In the span of about 3 weeks the National Enquirer said that Prince died of Suicide, Accidental Drug Overdose, Aids, and Suicide because of Aids. The Same publication declared 3 separate causes of death for the same person in back to back to back issues, and yet people still read and believe this fucking garbage.

Perhaps parent comment was thinking of a different tabloid, or a different country with stronger libel laws.

I was eventually able to find the story you mention, although I couldn't get the Enquirer's site to deliver it to me; I had to depend on the Google cache. There's a possibly more stable copy of the article at http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?495943-National-..., followed by the kind of worthless tripe comments you'd expect from the kind of people who read gossip tabloids; there's more background at http://gawker.com/why-is-the-internet-obsessed-with-photos-o....

It might turn out that the Enquirer is wrong, but I see no reason to assume that they are; they've been right about a lot of apparently implausible gossipy stories in the past. I also feel kind of dirty for even considering the question, since obviously whether Clinton has sex with women (lesbians or otherwise) is a private matter.

> Before the separation of the American colonies from Britain to form the United States, there was already a defense of truth to libel claims. Say what is true, and libel is not much of a worry to you.

I had never heard this before. Consider this summary of the Zenger trial of 1735 here ( http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/zenger/zengera... ):

> The trial opened on August 4 on the main floor of New York's City Hall with Attorney General Bradley's reading of the information filed against Zenger. Bradley told jurors that Zenger, "being a seditious person and a frequent printer and publisher of false news and seditious libels" had "wickedly and maliciously" devised to "traduce, scandalize, and vilify" Governor Cosby and his ministers. Bradley said that "Libeling has always been discouraged as a thing that tends to create differences among men, ill blood among the people, and oftentimes great bloodshed between the party libeling and the party libeled."

> After a brief statement from John Chambers, Zenger's court-appointed attorney, Andrew Hamilton rose to announce that his client--sitting in an enclosed box in the courtroom--would not contest having printed and published the allegedly libelous materials contained in the Weekly Journal and that "therefore I shall save Mr. Attorney the trouble of examining his witnesses to that point."

> Following Hamilton's surprise announcement, the prosecution's three witnesses (Zenger's journeyman associate and two of his sons) were sent home, and there was a long silence. Finally, Bradley spoke: "As Mr. Hamilton has confessed the printing and publishing of these libels, I think the Jury must find a verdict for the king. For supposing they were true, the law says that [sic] are not the less libelous for that. Nay, indeed the law says their being true is an aggravation of the crime." Bradley proceeded to offer a detailed and generally accurate account of the state of law on seditious libel of the time, supporting his conclusion that the truth of a libel is no defense.

> Hamilton argued that the libel law of England ought not to be the libel law of New York

> His arguments might have been well-received by jurors, but Hamilton had almost no law to support his position that the truth should be a defense to the charge of libel. Not surprisingly, Chief Justice Delancey ruled that Hamilton could not present evidence of the truth of the statements contained in Zenger's Journal. "The law is clear that you cannot justify a libel," Delancey announced. "The jury may find that Zenger printed and published those papers, and leave to the Court to judge whether they are libelous."

(all emphasis is mine)

There's not much common ground between your position that "there was already a defense of truth to libel claims. Say what is true, and libel is not much of a worry to you" and the more conventional position that under English law of the time "a libelous statement's being true is an aggravation of the crime".

Zenger's case is the case I was referring to, and it happened well before the independence of the United States.

And you'll notice that the law was very clear that truth was not a defense to libel. Evidence of truth wasn't even admissible in court, because it wasn't relevant to whether libel had been committed.

Zenger's lawyer explicitly asked in court for jury nullification. That he got it didn't change the law.

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