Title: Trump Promises Harsh Media Criticism of Him Will Be ILLEGAL If He’s President (TITLE IS FALSE HE DIDN'T ACTUALLY SAY THAT) Source:
Counter Current News URL Source:http://countercurrentnews.com/2016/ ... legal-if-he-becomes-president/ Published:Feb 27, 2016 Author:M. David Post Date:2016-02-27 11:46:16 by Deckard Keywords:None Views:14326 Comments:68
Have you ever made fun of Donald Trump? Have you ever read an editorial that really lays into him with criticisms of his proposed policies, or even his hair?
Well if Trump becomes president, he promises that things will change, and these sorts of critiques will no longer be legal.
It almost sounds like satire, but during a speech in Texas on Friday morning, the Republican candidate and frontrunner, Donald Trump said he wants to sue news outlets if they negative stories about him.
He acknowledged that currently the First Amendment of the Constitution protects a free press, and thus shields journalists from suits like this.
But Trump said on Friday that he would limit the press using litigation that would be permitted due to “opening up” libel laws and allowing them to include things like criticism and critiques that he doesn’t like.
“I think the media is among the most dishonest groups of people I’ve ever met,” Trump stated. “They’re terrible.”
So Trump promised to change things through legislating what he considers “honest reporting.”
“One of the things I’m gonna do, and this is only gonna make it tougher for me, and I’ve never said this before, but one of the things I’m gonna do if I win… is I’m gonna open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money. We’re gonna open up those libel laws.”
He went even further and made it clear what he meant, saying, “We’re gonna open up those libel laws, folks, and we’re gonna have people sue you like you never get sued before.”
Americans who have no experience with, or knowledge of, tyranny believe that only terrorists will experience the unchecked power of the state. They will believe this until it happens to them, or their children, or their friends.
"And here I thought misterwhite was opposed to frivolous lawsuits."
I expect the truth from any organization given special protection under the first amendment. The first amendment exists in order to protect the dissemination of the truth to the public.
I don't see the benefit in protecting the ability of news organizations to tell me lies. I think if a protected news organization intentionally tells me lies they should be held responsible under our civil tort laws.
The second amendment protects your right to keep and bear arms. Does that mean you can use those arms to violate the law?
Americans who have no experience with, or knowledge of, tyranny believe that only terrorists will experience the unchecked power of the state. They will believe this until it happens to them, or their children, or their friends.
Americans who have no experience with, or knowledge of, tyranny believe that only terrorists will experience the unchecked power of the state. They will believe this until it happens to them, or their children, or their friends.
Americans who have no experience with, or knowledge of, tyranny believe that only terrorists will experience the unchecked power of the state. They will believe this until it happens to them, or their children, or their friends.
Americans who have no experience with, or knowledge of, tyranny believe that only terrorists will experience the unchecked power of the state. They will believe this until it happens to them, or their children, or their friends.
Americans who have no experience with, or knowledge of, tyranny believe that only terrorists will experience the unchecked power of the state. They will believe this until it happens to them, or their children, or their friends.
Americans who have no experience with, or knowledge of, tyranny believe that only terrorists will experience the unchecked power of the state. They will believe this until it happens to them, or their children, or their friends.
"By Deckard's "reasoning", establishment insiders should have a greater right to keep and bear arms than the rest of us."
They way I read him, establishment insiders (EI) would have the same right to keep and bear arms as the rest of us.
BUT, the EI could use those arms any way they wanted without repercussion. They can shoot people, rob stores, whatever -- all the while hiding behind their special EI license to own guns.
They way I read him, establishment insiders (EI) would have the same right to keep and bear arms as the rest of us.
BUT, the EI could use those arms any way they wanted without repercussion. They can shoot people, rob stores, whatever -- all the while hiding behind their special EI license to own guns.
Yeah, that's about right. The Übermensch could shoot the Juden, but the Juden couldn't shoot back. Heil, Deckard!
The court decided that public figures needed to prove that there was a falsehood ,and that the press knew it was false.
In this case there is no Federal libel laws. There are state laws. So when Her Donald proposes "opening up " libel laws what he means is that he wants to amend the 1st amendment .
"If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools." Plato
Heres the rundown: On August 18, 2000, journalist Jane Akre won $425,000 in a court ruling where she charged she was pressured by Fox News management and lawyers to air what she knew and documented to be false information.
The real information: she found out cows in Florida were being injected with RBGH, a drug designed to make cows produce milk and, according to FDA-redacted studies, unintentionally designed to make human beings produce cancer.
Fox lawyers, under pressure by the Monsanto Corporation (who produced RBGH), rewrote her report over 80 times to make it compatible with the companys requests. She and her husband, journalist Steve Wilson, refused to air the edited segment.
In February 2003, Fox appealed the decision and an appellate court and had it overturned. Fox lawyers argued it was their first amendment right to report false information. In a six-page written decision, the Court of Appeals decided the FCCs position against news distortion is only a policy, not a law, rule, or regulation.
So, Fox and the other gladiatorical cable news channels were given the okay to legally lie right around the time of the Iraq Wars birth when media lies coincidentally hit a peak in both frequency and severity.
Truth is treason in the empire of lies. - Ron Paul
Americans who have no experience with, or knowledge of, tyranny believe that only terrorists will experience the unchecked power of the state. They will believe this until it happens to them, or their children, or their friends.
The court decided that public figures needed to prove that there was a falsehood
Quote, please. It's not like I don't trust your interpretations, but I don't trust your interpretations.
'In sum the court ruled that "the First Amendment protects the publication of all statements, even false ones, about the conduct of public officials except when statements are made with actual malice (with knowledge that they are false or in reckless disregard of their truth or falsity).'
"The court decided that public figures needed to prove that there was a falsehood"
This is an example of why nobody with an above room temperature IQ depends on anonymous Wikipedia opinions.
The Court acknowledged that there were falsehoods.
We are required in this case to determine for the first time the extent to which the constitutional protections for speech and press limit a State's power to award damages in a libel action brought by a public official against critics of his official conduct.
In sustaining the trial court's determination that the verdict was not excessive, the court said that malice could be inferred from the Times' "irresponsibility" in printing the advertisement while the Times, in its own files, had articles already published which would have demonstrated the falsity of the allegations in the advertisement from the Times' failure to retract for respondent while retracting for the Governor, whereas the falsity of some of the allegations was then known to the Times...
Americans who have no experience with, or knowledge of, tyranny believe that only terrorists will experience the unchecked power of the state. They will believe this until it happens to them, or their children, or their friends.
You are coming to know how much of a dictator he is, I'm wondering when do his campaigners put on their brown shirts and start beating democrats with billy clubs?
Why the higher standard? Prior to 1967 the same standard applied to public or private figures.
I can give you Justice William Brennan's reasoning in his majority He placed the legal issues in the context of "a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials." Brennan maintained that erroneous statements are inevitable in free debate and must be protected if freedom of expression is to have the "breathing space" it needs to survive.
In the decision Brennan did not go as far as Justices Hugo Black and William Douglas would've liked. The voted in favor of the opinion ,but would've made it impossible for a public figure to win a liable case. They concluded that the First Amendment provided an absolute Immunity for criticism of the way public officials do their public duty.
This was not a divided court on this case. There was a 9-0 majority .
"If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools." Plato
Americans who have no experience with, or knowledge of, tyranny believe that only terrorists will experience the unchecked power of the state. They will believe this until it happens to them, or their children, or their friends.
"a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials."
I read that statement and I agree.
"erroneous statements are inevitable in free debate and must be protected if freedom of expression is to have the "breathing space" it needs to survive."
I read that and agree with it also.
So, where do intentional lies (not errors) about a candidate fit into that? Isn't a lie about a candidate contrary to the principle of an honest debate? Are you better off if the New York Times gives you no information or misinformation?
And if "debate on public issues" is the reason, then why does the law extend to actors, sports figures, TV personalities, and other public figures?
Celebrities use the courts to fight defamation all the time. Sometimes they win and sometimes they lose. Just recently Jesse Ventura won a $1.8 million defamation lawsuit against the estate of Chris Kyle .
"If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools." Plato
Actually the example I gave doesn't apply because he did not sue the press. However the press gets sued often ,and although the Sullivan standards are a higher threshold ,that doesn't mean they are immune from a suit . They still have to count on a judge ,and still have to spend the $$ in their defense . And they sometimes lose.
Influential people in federal, state and local government and those in the "star" category of cultural trend-setter have been filing a fair proportion of libel cases against the print and broadcast media in recent years, according to the study. But the more influential they were, the less often they won. Those with the most visible public personalities won just 29 of the 131 suits they took to court.
The implications of that record are obvious to the study's authors, University of Minnesota journalism professor Donald M. Gillmor and San Francisco lawyer Melanie C. Grant. They want to close the courthouse door to libel lawsuits by those who achieve public prominence as policymakers or stars.
Gillmor and Grant propose that "public officials at policymaking levels and celebrities," dependent upon the media for their fame and fortune, "shall have no remedy in libel law." The authors do want the media to give something in return: They should stand ready to open their news columns or air time for replies by influential people whom they wrong as a voluntary rather than a legally compelled remedy.
While their proposed solution is hardly likely to become law, the Gillmor-Grant study is worth a second look. For some years now, similar proposals have been bandied about by legal scholars and judges, with little behind the discussion but raw theory. Now, with a wealth of statistics from 614 libel cases against the media between 1982 and 1988, Gillmor and Grant have provided a firm scholarly basis for what seems a compelling conclusion: Since the high-profile libel suit is demonstrably a failure, it can no longer claim to have social value or purpose.
The Gillmor-Grant study is, at its core, a tough reminder that the American press did not get what it thought it was getting in 1964, when the U. S. Supreme Court decided the case of New York Times v. Sullivan . The ruling, which put libel law under the restraints of the First Amendment for the first time, supposedly built a constitutional bulwark against libel lawsuits by public officials and celebrities.
It has been easy enough to make the argument, in theory, that the Sullivan decision was very good for the press, because it opened the way for more rigorous, even aggressive, coverage of public affairs. It is alien to American political theory to permit those with power to try to silence the press when it gets too tough or too close in monitoring the powerful.
And, one could easily extend the theory to suggest that libel as a legal option ought to be reserved for those who have no influence in society. They often are unable to generate publicity to counter harmful stories and, besides, they rarely become targets of aggressive press attention.
The press has been relying on the Sullivan theory, and thus has been able to tell itself, over and over again, that its constitutional shield was sturdy indeed. But high-profile individuals apparently did not get it: They kept suing and suing and suing. The fact that they didn't win much (and everybody believed that as a matter of faith, even before the Gillmor-Grant data became available) provided little comfort. The press may have walked away from many of those legal bouts without paying megabuck verdicts, but its wallet was a lot thinner after paying the legal bills to gain those victories.
It fell on deaf ears among many members of the press when a critic of Sullivan noted that the decision did not keep the powerful from suing; it simply set down the rules that, with increasing complexity, made libel lawsuits costlier.
Now come Gillmor and Grant to deflate the myth of Sullivan 's promise of deliverance from the devil of libel. A form of litigation with such a low success rate, they show, is a futile exercise.
But what can the press do about that? It has just two options; neither is at all promising. It can go to the Supreme Court in the next libel case and try to persuade the justices to extend Sullivan to implement the ban suggested by Gillmor and Grant. Or it can troop to every state legislature (and perhaps Congress as well) and ask lawmakers to eliminate their right to sue the press for libel.
The first option is as foolhardy as the second. The current Supreme Court appears to be bent on retreating from Sullivan , not expanding its scope. The press doesn't know what it would get if the court began to tinker with Sullivan .
It hardly needs saying that the second option is a dream world proposition. Every harried politician in the country knows that a libel lawsuit is a good publicity gimmick, even when it fails.
The Gillmor-Grant study might yet be put to use, however: Press lawyers could cite it as they try to get celebrities to settle out of court. l
http://ajrarchive.org/Article.asp?id=1749
"If you do not take an interest in the affairs of your government, then you are doomed to live under the rule of fools." Plato