CHAPTER 10

LIBEL, RIGHT OF PRIVACY, FREEDOM OF INFORMATION AND COPYRIGHT

Is the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution the same to a reporter as an umpire's "call 'em as I see 'em" license? Is the new city official really a crafty, communist sympathizer?

To the grief of many a publisher and reporter, there is no absolute license to print whatever one pleases about a private citizen or about the government.

Free speech and free press, as guaranteed by the Constitution, have two sides: on one side, the right to use them; on the other, the duty not to abuse them. When the news media abuses its right to a free press, they commit an age-old offense known as libel - the defamation of a person's reputation.

Because your job is to write about the Navy, you should become acquainted with the danger of defamation. This chapter provides information on what you should guard against when releasing material to the news media or publishing it in internal publications. It also acquaints you with the right of privacy and some of the laws of copyright.

LIBEL AND SLANDER

LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Define libel and slander; identify how libel is committed and determine who is responsible for a libelous story.

Libel is a difficult offense to describe. Libel laws are state laws, and there are differences in the definitions of libel from state to state. For the purposes of this training manual, we will define libel as follows:

Libel is a published (written, printed or pictured) defamation that unjustly holds a person up to ridicule, contempt, hatred or financial injury.

All states agree that libel is a defamation, an act that tends to degrade or lower a person in the eyes of others. The effects can subject a person to ridicule, hatred or contempt (or all three), or they can cause a person financial injury by hurting the person's property or business or by causing loss of employment.

As you can see, defamation does not have to be sensational to be libelous. A picture with the people erroneously identified in the caption can be libelous. A newspaper headline, even if the story under it is blameless, can be libelous.

Radio and television are not exempt from libel laws. A picture on television can be as libelous as one printed in a newspaper. A radio broadcast can defame an individual, although there is some dispute in the courts as to whether the offense would be libel or slander. Slander differs from libel chiefly in that it is spoken instead of printed, written or pictured. In other words, slander is defamation by oral communication. A major distinction between libel and slander is found in the word "published." Since slander is an oral defamation, the courts tend to view it as a lesser offense than libel because the words, once uttered, are quickly gone. Libel, on the other hand, is a published wrong and is felt to endure longer and thus cause greater injury. Consequently, the law is much stricter in dealing with libel cases than with slander claims.

However, the subject becomes a bit cloudy when oral remarks (slander) are read from a written script or when they are recorded. Therefore, you should exercise equal care to avoid both oral and written defamatory statements.

True statements about a person also can be libelous. Many people think that libel results only from untruths told about another. This is not so. The truth can sometimes defame an individual as much as a lie.

A simple defamation, however, is not always libel. The following are three conditions that are necessary before a statement becomes libel:

There must be a true defamation. In other words, a person's character or property must in some way be degraded.

There must be clear identification of the person. This identification, however, does not have to be by name. A writer (or an artist) can very easily leave no doubt in the public's mind as to a person's identity without mentioning the individual's name. Even if only a few persons were to realize the person's identity, libel is still possible.

The libel must be published. This does not mean that it must be printed in a newspaper. You will recall from the definition that libel can be written (as in a letter that is seen by a single third person) or it can be pictured (as in a photograph or cartoon). Spoken libel, or slander, is also considered by the courts to have been published. As a Navy journalist, you will not have to concern yourself too much about the legal and technical differences between libel and slander. It is sufficient to know that any defamation may be considered unlawful, regardless of whether it is written or spoken. One of your jobs is to make sure that defamatory statements do not reach print or the airwaves through a Navy news release.

Libel, as an offense, is almost as old as civilization. Many early societies punished those who would harm the name or reputation of another. Decimation before the invention of printing almost always took the form of slander. An early code of Egyptian law recognized slander as an offense against the sun god.

After the invention of printing, libel became very closely related to freedom of the press. Through history, governments have taken various and often harsh views of a free press. For centuries, the struggle for some measure of press freedom was an uphill battle. Much of the trouble encountered in striving for press freedom revolved around the fact that for a long time governments considered any adverse criticism or comment to be libelous. Thus rulers went as far as to imprison or put to death writers who had criticized them in print. Even today, in some countries, too much of the wrong kind of criticism can mean a newspaper will be closed.

A balance between ruthless suppression and license was struck by the U.S. Constitution, and the courts have strengthened this balance in the intervening years. Today, as one writer says, freedom of the press and speech is "the first principle of the Anglo-American legal structure." He goes on to say these freedoms are a "specific legal principle defining the relationship, in a democracy, between the people and their elected representatives."

Libel laws exist because the free press is a two-way street There are obligations that accompany the rights of freedom of speech and press. The managers of a respectable news medium obey the libel laws not merely because they wish to avoid being sued but because they believe in the dignity of the individual.