No, you're saying that because someone could get hurt,bee should have restrictions on the freedom of the press.
all of my restrictions though are based on making it easier to take media outlets to civil court for restitution, and in one case, mandating a specific form of restitution in form of a front page restraction, nothing I have stated is prior restraint.
Looked to me like you were advocating removing anonymity.
Looked to me like you were advocating removing anonymity.
through civil discovery if an aggrieved party files a lawsuit.
and there is no constitutional right to press anonymity, some states have laws providing for it, but it's not in the constitution.
Example,
EMNofSeattle, a journalist for the Tabloid News Daily publishes an article "According to anonymous sources, KevinKohler is a candy thief, he's been seen numerous times by our source lifting candy bars from the local bodega" and now suddenly you're banned from all the grocery stores, so you file suit against me. in preparation for trial you're permitted to file for discovery, in which if I hold information or documents germane to your case I must preserve that information and provide it to you, if I contest the information is not relevant to your suit it gets presented to a judge who determines its relevance.
I'm saying that in a case involving libel, anonymous sources can very well relevant and court rules should permit plaintiffs to file for discovery of unnamed sources.
The better solution is to simply remove the profit motive to post ever increasingly sensationalistic headlines.
Anonynimity is the basis of free speech. You would allow slander/libel lawyers to end that freedom with threat of force.
It is clear that the First Amendment does not invalidate every incidental burdening of the press that may result from the enforcement of civil or criminal statutes of general applicability. Under prior cases, otherwise valid laws serving substantial public interests may be enforced against the press as against others, despite [p683] the possible burden that may be imposed. The Court has emphasized that
[t]he publisher of a newspaper has no special immunity from the application of general laws. He has no special privilege to invade the rights and liberties of others.
To be fair, the arguments here would probably be more honest and civil if everyone used their real names. And that goes for the internet in general. The fact that most of us use fake names is also a protection against vindictive anonymous people who can potentially harm us without the ability for us to seek retribution.
No it's not.
408 U.S. 665
Branzburg v. Hayes (No. 70-85)
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/408/665
That only has to do with reporters not being able criminal activity, that has no bearing on poor reporting or being able to make a law against it
there is no law against poor reporting and no one has suggested one. an action that is a civil tort is not illegal, it's merely a liability.
One of my biggest complaints I have about the mass media is that they have a near unlimited ability to destroy people's lives by propogating a false story.
Fake news is not just a political term, it's a very real crisis that is destroying lives. Darren Wilson had his life upended for doing nothing wrong, biased media coverage resulted in a Miami cop named Luis Alvarez facing a show trial in the 1980s. The infamous story of a gang rape that never happened at UVa, we see numerous cases of the press taking things out of context for ratings, so I have two ideas
1) no more confidential sources, as Trump said at CPAC, it's very simple, if a media story defames your character you can sue the outlet, during the lawsuit there is a legal process called "discovery" where you can obtain information held by the defendant that is germane to your case, the identity of any "confidential sources" should be compelled by discovery during such suits. once compelled it becomes part of the court record of the suit.
2) if a court rules against you in a libel claim, you as the news media outlet must publish a front page (or prime time) retraction. it will read "REGARDING OUR STORY ON <fill in title of article here> INFORMATION CONVEYED ABOUT <name of plaintiff> WAS DETERMINED BY <the court that found against the media outlet> TO BE LIBELOUS IN NATURE, PLEASE READ THE RETRACTIONS SECTION FOR MORE INFORMATION
Neither of these restrict the content of stories, it simply provides victims of bad reporting tools to help clear their name. it also will provide incentives to verify stories and help publish more accurate news items, which will restore public faith in the press.
Why would all cc have to stop? You could speak all you want confidentially up until you're 100% sure your story is true and you're ready to print.
Well you can punish the reporter for not doing so.
Courts have generally ruled that outside of specific statute there is no constitutional right against having to name sources.
In one case a federal court ruled a journalist who wrote a story that led to a doctor being criminally charged had to disclose his sources because the defendant had a right to compel his sources to appear as defense witnesses, in another the Supreme Court ruled that journalists are simply private citizens and to give them the power to shield sources would grant them more rights then the general public.
FOX and Breitbart led the charge of defamation, when they put ACORN out of business in 2010. ACORN was a group that worked on housing for the poor. All the allegations and lies were proven wrong, but the damage was done, and they were forced to close their doors.
Acorn to Shut All Its Offices by April 1 - The New York Times
Both the kind of sanctions in the post to which you respond and your response are a little extreme.
Perhaps a review by an unbiased court of some kind of appeals that reviews the source's credibility immediately and confidentially...
In light of revelations on the neutrality of courts, though, finding an unbiased court might be challenging.
The victims of poor reporting and poorly founded political witch hunts are entitled to ask the same question: "Who do I see to get my reputation back?"
People like Al Sharpton are only too willing to destroy anyone to find a little camera time. Facts, truth and honesty have no connection to what these shisters will do to get their face(s) on the tube.
Yeah, this is the problem, and this is why the government has absolutely no business whatsoever trying to micromanage the press, ever, under any circumstances. You wanna turn the industry that keeps things accountable over to a government that is trying to force its own intelligence agency to lie for an agenda? No ****ing way.
The system for dealing with false accusations is fine as it is. It is already a punishable crime to falsely accuse someone of a crime. It is already possible to sue a journalist for libel if they were negligent (if they weren't negligent, then your accusation would go back to the accuser).
Believe me, journalists are well-taught to avoid being libelous, and they put a lot of work into avoiding it. That's why they are so rarely successfully sued. They do their jobs well on the whole. Fact is, there are very few "victims" of bad reporting. Most people who lose face due to the media lose it because they did something wrong. Well, maybe they shouldda thought of that before they did it.
Rarely, that's not the case, but the reality is that no system can ever be perfect, and trying to micromanage them isn't going to change that. That's just an immutable fact of reality. But journalism is about as good as it's realistically possible to get, and there is already a system for reprimanding them when they don't do their jobs properly. We don't need more.
Al Sharpton is allowed to be an obnoxious talking head. That is not a crime, and the government doesn't have a right to silence him.
Al Sharpton is not a reporter. The sycophantic stenographers in the press dutifully report his biased assumptions and lies with no context to judge his truthiness.
This is, in it's own way, a lie. So is reporting without context that "sources say" or that something is "causing questions". At the same time, adding context to some reports and not to others is bias:
The bank was robbed by Sam Jones. The bank was robbed by Sam Jones, a black man.
Back to Al, if the context provided is that Al is a noted civlil rights advocate, that creates one context. If the context provided is that Al is a loud mouthed advocate for his own screen time who has been known to distort and corrupt the truth, that is wholly another.
Arguably, both narratives are true.
Journalists are, as you say, "well-taught to avoid being libelous". This does not mean that they are tring to relay an accurate report of the events as they happened. It means they are taught to source their assertions.
If you say in the paper that Al Sharpton is a Klan member, that might be actionable against you. If a reporter heard you say that and then published, "According to Smoke and Mirrors, Al Sharpton is a Klan member", that is not actionable against the reporter.
The accuracy of the statement regarding Al is no longer at issue. The legal issue for the reporter is whether or not you said what he said you said. Libel avoided. Very probably a lie is spread.
The press using techniques like the quote, the unattributed quote and the "raising questions" ploy is protected against libel and that is why you see so many devices like this employed.
Do we suspend the first amendment in order to avoid these techniques of lying. Probably not a good idea. Would it be a good idea for the editorial staffs of the major news sources to actually police their own work through professional and ethical work standards and practices? Probably so.
CBS is in the forefront in critiquing a Drudge-like operation as not having a robust editorial process and yet their editorial staff approved a Dan Rather hosted hour long lie about George W Bush. Disgraceful. Murrow must have been spinning like a pinwheel in his grave.
Like it or not, the Yellow Journalism of our past is back and stringer than ever. The Agenda and political slant of every national news outlet is apparent and obvious for all to see.
Propaganda is what we are fed. It's all that's available. Pick your poison and drink it to the bottom.
One of my biggest complaints I have about the mass media is that they have a near unlimited ability to destroy people's lives by propogating a false story.
Fake news is not just a political term, it's a very real crisis that is destroying lives. Darren Wilson had his life upended for doing nothing wrong, biased media coverage resulted in a Miami cop named Luis Alvarez facing a show trial in the 1980s. The infamous story of a gang rape that never happened at UVa, we see numerous cases of the press taking things out of context for ratings, so I have two ideas
1) no more confidential sources, as Trump said at CPAC, it's very simple, if a media story defames your character you can sue the outlet, during the lawsuit there is a legal process called "discovery" where you can obtain information held by the defendant that is germane to your case, the identity of any "confidential sources" should be compelled by discovery during such suits. once compelled it becomes part of the court record of the suit.
2) if a court rules against you in a libel claim, you as the news media outlet must publish a front page (or prime time) retraction. it will read "REGARDING OUR STORY ON <fill in title of article here> INFORMATION CONVEYED ABOUT <name of plaintiff> WAS DETERMINED BY <the court that found against the media outlet> TO BE LIBELOUS IN NATURE, PLEASE READ THE RETRACTIONS SECTION FOR MORE INFORMATION
Neither of these restrict the content of stories, it simply provides victims of bad reporting tools to help clear their name. it also will provide incentives to verify stories and help publish more accurate news items, which will restore public faith in the press.
So you name three cases over the course of decades, in an industry that creates literally thousands of stories every single day, and that means we should basically destroy the press? That's ****ing insane. Absolutely not.
1. Without confidential sources, there is no accountability for governments. We never would have uncovered Watergate without confidential sources. It's not unreasonable for sources to not want to come forward if it means they're going to be locked away by a corrupt institution, or assassinated, which some of them would be. Allowing confidential sources is part of how protect them from that, and protect democracy by extension. Banning confidential sources is one of the way you wind up with an autocracy. And the American public, as a rule, has been fairly good about deciding what organizations have a good enough reputation to be taken seriously with anonymous sources, and which ones don't.
2. Do you read the news, dude? They already do that even when they don't get sued. One part of being a credible news organization is putting out retractions when need be.
I know. And he's still allowed to say what he likes. It's called freedom of speech, dude. No one is refering to Al Sharpton as a "source" of information. That's nonsense.
They also report Ann Coulter's opinions, and Pat Robertson's opinions, and all kinds of other lunatics to the right. So why is it that you're only all worked about the one on the left?
Sounds to me like you're not so much interested in making the press more "fair" as you are in just silencing people you don't like.
If I said Al Sharpton was a Klan member and for some reason I was a big enough deal for anyone to care what I said, then any reasonable journalist worth their salt would check if Ihe was registered with the Klan, and add "According to Klan records, Al Sharpton is not a member, nor has he ever been associated with the Klan."
The impression would then be that I were a crackpot for saying something baseless, and people would be less likely to take him seriously. Which is EXACTLY what happens in reality. And same with Ann Coulter, Pat Robertson, et al. Part of why journalists sometimes run crazy quotes like that is exactly so that they can debunk them. That's the whole point.
Again, why do you only care about silencing people you politically disagree with?
One of my biggest complaints I have about the mass media is that they have a near unlimited ability to destroy people's lives by propogating a false story.
Fake news is not just a political term, it's a very real crisis that is destroying lives. Darren Wilson had his life upended for doing nothing wrong, biased media coverage resulted in a Miami cop named Luis Alvarez facing a show trial in the 1980s. The infamous story of a gang rape that never happened at UVa, we see numerous cases of the press taking things out of context for ratings, so I have two ideas
1) no more confidential sources, as Trump said at CPAC, it's very simple, if a media story defames your character you can sue the outlet, during the lawsuit there is a legal process called "discovery" where you can obtain information held by the defendant that is germane to your case, the identity of any "confidential sources" should be compelled by discovery during such suits. once compelled it becomes part of the court record of the suit.
2) if a court rules against you in a libel claim, you as the news media outlet must publish a front page (or prime time) retraction. it will read "REGARDING OUR STORY ON <fill in title of article here> INFORMATION CONVEYED ABOUT <name of plaintiff> WAS DETERMINED BY <the court that found against the media outlet> TO BE LIBELOUS IN NATURE, PLEASE READ THE RETRACTIONS SECTION FOR MORE INFORMATION
Neither of these restrict the content of stories, it simply provides victims of bad reporting tools to help clear their name. it also will provide incentives to verify stories and help publish more accurate news items, which will restore public faith in the press.
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