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Reckless DisregardBack in 1964, the US of A Supreme Court decided New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. Here is the actual text of the decision. Folks have long agreed that is wrong for you to make a false statement about someone, a statement that you know to be false. That someone can then sue you for defamation (slander if it's spoken; libel if it's written). Yes, and yes. We've long agreed that it's wrong for the gummint to restrain your statement before you make it. But by golly it can lend the aid of its courts, after the fact, for the defamed person to mulct you in damages for your having perpetrated this knowingly wicked deed against him. No, and no. We've also long agreed that it's wrong for the gummint's courts to assist the defamed man in mulcting you in damages if you had the honest belief that the statement that you were making was true, and if your belief had a reasonable basis at the time (even though that basis turned out to be wrong after the fact). But what if you had no honest belief, and/or no reasonable basis? Where should the line be drawn? The Supreme Court drew the line at "reckless disregard". There is always some chance that what you say or print will be false. In this case, you ran (or must have run) a quick survey of the chances that the statement was false, realized (or must have realized) that the chances were unacceptably high, yet made the statement anyway. How quick (or detailed) must this survey be? If a quick survey seems to indicate that your source is credible, or that the information is reliable, a detailed survey is not required. A detailed survey is required when the results of the quick survey are inconclusive. The survey must get detailed enough that chance of the statement being wrong becomes sufficient small. What is this? You ran no survey at all? You got a statement from a source that you knew nothing about, and you did nothing to check the credibility of your source, nor the accuracy of the statement? And you passed on the statement anyway? Bad feng shui, kid; bad feng shui. You'd better bring your checkbook to the preliminary settlement conference, kid. You'd better line up a home-equity line-of-credit too, kid. The check that you sign at the preliminary settlement conference will probably need to tap into that line of credit. What the New York Times had done was to run an advertisement paid for, and signed by, a number of prominent Negro civil rights activists, all of good reputation. The advertisement alleged that Sullivan -- the Police Commissioner of Montgomery, Alabama -- had ordered and/or willfully tolerated various police misdeeds against Negroes in Montgomery. Many of these misdeeds had never occurred. The Times never checked the accuracy of the ad, and relied on the prominence and good reputation of the advertisers. That was enough, said the Supreme Court. Sure, the Times might have been guilty of negligence -- it ought to have recognized that the ad had too high of a change of being false -- but it at least made some evaluation of the possible falsity of the ad, and its evaluation used a reasonable basis: prominence and good reputation. Prominent people of good reputation, placing an ad in the Times, don't like to lose that prominence and good reputation. They thus have probably conducted an adequate survey that they facts were true -- a survey upon which the Times could rely. Negligence is not enough. The Times must have been reckless. And Sullivan hadn't show that it was. But the typical urban legend passed around on the Internet? What person passing on such an urban legend ever considers the credibility of his source, or the accuracy of his information? None! So don't do it. Say, have you heard what the President's psychiatrist has
to say about the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? Well, according the the
psychiatrist's bartender, who posted an email that eventually made its way into
the hands of my ex-wife's hairdresser's kid brother's high-school buddy's parole
officer's supervisor's pastor's wife's ex-boyfriend, it seems that: |