It’s just a fact that no one knows the specifics of what GOP frontrunner Herman Cain was accused of while he was running the National Restaurant Association from 1996 to 1999.  Nor, outside of the term “five figures,” do we know what the amount of the settlements were. There are no reports, however, that the police were involved. What we do know is that even though Politico doesn’t have much of a story, the same MSM that ignored a sex scandal involving Democrat John Edwards while he was running for President is now obsessed with a decade-plus old scandal involving a black Republican.

It’s also pretty obvious that The Philadelphia Inquirer has just decided to take it to another level with this wildly misleading headline:

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A tipster informs us that this is the headline in the Inquirer’s print edition, as well.

Here’s Merriam-Webster’s definition of sexual abuse:

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When someone calls my office and wants to sue somebody for libel or slander, assuming they manage to get through my phalanx of people devoted to keeping me insulated from time burglars, the first thing I say to them is, “You probably have no case.”  I don’t wait to hear the facts.  I don’t need to know their evidence.  I know that statistically speaking, it just is not going to have merit.  Yet threatening defamation suits is a growing tactic in the war on the new media.

Defamation cases generally fail.  And by “generally,” I mean almost all of them.  I’ve never lost a libel case I’ve defended.  Why are defamation cases so bad?  Defamation is a unique tort because it involves publishing false and unprivileged negative information about someone.  With the First Amendment’s free speech guarantees – you know, the ones that frustrate and irritate the left to no end when those of us on the right avail ourselves of them – defamation takes on  whole new dimension you do not find in regular torts like negligence.  There’s a tension between the right to speak and the right not to be lied about, and the courts generally err on the side of free speech.  This is especially true in the context of political debates.  (more…)

James Taranto in his “Best of the Web Today” column in The Wall Street Journal:

Shirley Sherrod says she plans to sue conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, the Associated Press reports from San Diego: “Speaking Thursday at the National Association of Black Journalists convention, Sherrod said she would definitely sue over the video that took her remarks out of context”:

Sherrod said she had not received an apology from Breitbart and no longer wanted one. “He had to know that he was targeting me,” she said.

Does she have a winning case? Probably not.

For one thing, the alleged defamation (or, to be precise, the defamation that she would allege if she filed suit) took place while she was a public official and involved claims about the performance of her public duties. Thus she would have to meet the rigorous standard, set forth by the Supreme Court in New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), of proving not only that Breitbart published a damaging falsehood about her but that he did so “with ‘actual malice’–that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” Even if she proves that Breitbart published false and defamatory statements about her, he wins the case if he did so only negligently. (more…)

Washington Post writer David Weigel has resigned his job reporting on the conservative movement and the Republican Party and the newspaper is well rid of him. Having only been hired in the spring of 2010, it took little time for this ill-trained scribe to demonstrate his lack of suitability for engaging in journalism at the major league level.

Weigel was found to have penned a substantial number of emails on a list serve that included disparaging comments about many of the people he covered during the course of his job. It was actually sort of cute reading his apology in which he sought to insulate himself, however thinly, by noting in the opening sentence that it was an off-the-record list serve from which his offending missives were pulled. How precious. No doubt he would give similar quarter to any source claiming off-the-record status.

In many circles, this demonstration of poor judgment alone would have been sufficient to dismiss a reporter but the Post is not well rid of him because of his politics or his opinions. It is because, though the public airing of his personal comments and attitudes, he has made himself a poster child for how to lose a libel suit. (more…)

The case of Too Much Media, LLC (Plaintiff) v. Shellee Hale (Defendant), decided by the Superior Court of New Jersey Appellate Division on April 22, 2010, is not a decision that should cause alarm among those who are engaged in, or are patrons of, new media news sources.

Internet enterprises associated with mainstream news outlets run their own news-related websites. Legitimate self-interests led them to challenge the trial court’s understanding of slander per se in this case. Consequently, if you consider the defendant, Shellee Hale, a member of the “new media,” then NBC and the New York Times came to her partial defense.

But… here’s the question: Does Hale become a journalist of the new news media by simply submitting a comment on a website?

Hale’s act of posting a comment on a website did not, in the Appellate Court’s decision, singularly qualify her as a journalist. Consequently, she is not a heroine of the independent (of legacy media affiliation) internet news media, and not one around whom we should necessarily rally to support. (more…)