Big Chill
But the officials he’d trashed filed a defamation suit–against not only the council member but the reporter and the owner of the paper he worked for. Instructed by the judge on Pennsylvania’s “neutral reporting privilege,” a jury ruled against the council member but in favor of the newspaper that had quoted him. Then things got strange. The state supreme court pointed out that a neutral reporting privilege doesn’t exist in Pennsylvania and reinstated the suit against the journalists.
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A neutral reporting privilege–reasonable though it might be–is recognized only in scattered jurisdictions in the U.S. It’s a privilege that allows journalists to report even charges they doubt are true but consider newsworthy because of who’s making them–such as the Audubon Society, which called some scientists “paid liars” in a 1977 New York Times article. The defamation suit against the Times was dismissed by a federal court that for the first time recognized a neutral reporting privilege.
“This is an amazing irresistible story,” wrote Start in 2002. “It involves intrigue and lots of money. And the innocent companies who are being forced to defend themselves in this debacle–the victims whose fate is fueling the outrage–deserve a lot of sympathy.”
A second justice agreed with Burke; a third concurred on the more coherent grounds that the headline exaggerated the Rockwell suit and therefore violated the privilege. The appellate court reinstated the charge of defamation.
The amicus brief asks the court “to clarify, once and for all, that the press in this State have an absolute right to perform the core function of their constitutionally protected job: To fairly and accurately report on the activities and processes of government.”
The Reader declined. This newspaper thinks appealing Miller and Cooper’s contempt of court citations to the Supreme Court is a bad idea, one that’s likely to cost the media dearly. An editorial in the May 1 Tribune did a good job of explaining why. The Tribune said that the journalists’ right to protect their sources hangs tenuously from an equivocal 1972 ruling in Branzburg v. Hayes. “Today’s court is far more likely to narrow that protection, or eliminate it altogether, than to expand it,” said the Tribune. “The facts of this case could hardly be less favorable to reporters. Plame was identified [as a CIA operative] not because the disclosure served some urgent public interest, but apparently because someone in the administration wanted retribution against her husband.” The Times and Time “would have done better to recognize the weakness of their case and simply complied with the original order, citing their obligation to obey the law. That would have left the ultimate decision on journalists’ privilege for a more promising case.”
