A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that us spineless "bloggers and the public have the same First Amendment protections as journalists when sued for defamation: If the issue is of public concern, plaintiffs have to prove negligence to win damages."
Gregg Leslie of the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press said the ruling affirms what many have long argued: Standards set by a 1974 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Gertz v. Robert Welch Inc., apply to everyone, not just journalists.
"It's not a special right to the news media," he said. "So it's a good thing for bloggers and citizen journalists and others."
Citizen journalists. Hmm. I like the sound of that. So much better than "spineless bloggers," don't you think? From now on, people who write in here are to be called "Citizen Journalists."
Not good news for the person who commented anonymously on December 8, 2013 at 1:17 PM.
I suspect this will be settled in Supreme Court.
ReplyDeleteFor now, nobody should have any expectation of anonymity on the internet even if they post with a fictitious or anonymous name.
Until it is settled by the SCOTUS, each judge can have their own interpretation.
As far as blogs/journalist being critical of public officials, this case hopefully will set a precedent. It almost matches what is going on here in Mt. Lebanon with private citizen criticism of a public concern.
The meet of the decision is here:
The appeals court ruled that the trustee was not a public figure, which could have invoked an even higher standard of showing the writer acted with malice, but the issue was of public concern, so the negligence standard applied.
So even though the bankruptcy trustee in this case was not a "public figure" as defined by the law, the issue at had was one of public concern.
The point being that it is quite simple to legally argue in the context of this case that any criticism of employees that have to do with a public concern would fall under this umbrella.
Mind you, this is not a license to go nuts with the criticism of municipal employees (this was big for me personally because I was on the fence on whether employees were public officials), its just a justification for things on this blog to continue as is....as long as this case doesn't get overturned.
PA defines "public officials" as all elected persons and all employees of Commonwealth governmental agencies who have control of spending of tax dollars.
ReplyDeleteMt. Lebanon erroneously requires members of all municipal boards to submit annual Financial Disclosure Statements for Public Officials, yet not all boards have any authority to spend tax dollars - they are advisory only, not administrative.