STATE LIBEL LAW DISSES NEW YORK TIMES: TOP COP WINS

The mighty have fallen! Yesterday afternoon, in a little over two hours, unanimous jurors found that The New York Times did not have First Amendment constitutional protection from libel suits when it printed statements that contained factual errors that damaged the official’s reputation. The jurors awarded the police commissioner, L.B. Sullivan, $500,000 in damages.

The March 29, 1960 edition of the New York Times ran a full-page advertisement entitled “Heed Their Rising Voices”, paid by followers of the civil rights movement and four Negro clergymen. The ad asked for donations to support three causes: the student movement, the voting-rights movement and the legal defense of the Negro Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the head of the campaign to remove segregation from our classrooms and public publics.

The ad referred to police crackdowns in Montgomery, saying that the students at the State College Ca

The High Court ruled that the importance of free debate in a democratic society was more important than factual errors that might damage public officials. To win a libel case, public officials need to prove that damaging statements were printed with malicious intent. Malice is defined as “reckless disregard for the truth, or advance knowledge of falsity.”

mpus were "being met by an unprecedented wave of terror." The ad described the alleged “ringing” by police at the campus after a student protest, that students were unfairly treated and were “starved into submission” when the police padlocked the college dinning hall. The students were ordered by the police to sang “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” (in actuality they sang the “Star-Spangled Banner”).

The Sedition Act of 1798, passed by President Adams's Federalists to suppress Jefferson's Republicans, made it a crime (punishable by both fine and imprisonment) to criticize federal officials or the Federal Government. Specifically, it said that “if any person shall, write, print, utter or publish.. any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress… or the President….with intent to defame…..or to bring them, or either of them, into contempt or disrepute; or to excite against them, or either or any of them, the hatred of the good people of the United States” (pg. 58). Alabama civil law concerning libels states that a publication is “libelous per se” if the words “tend to injure a person… in his reputation” or “r

Some topics in this essay:
Sedition Act, United States”, York Times, Banner” Sullivan, Constitution Alabama, College Campus, Rising Voices”, Times Amendment, King Jr, Government Specifically, sedition act, public officials, york times, alabama law, 1798 sedition, “libelous se”, sedition act 1798, 1798 sedition act, act 1798, sullivan york times, malice presumed, actual malice, factual errors,