WorldNetDaily would love to overturn Times v. Sullivan, the basis of current-day libel law setting a higher bar for libel involving public figures, and Bob Unruh’s Dec. 29 article on it begins, as usual, with a pro-Trump, anti-Biden tirade:
The American legacy media now is facing the prospect of a new court threat: Be truthful or else.
It’s coming as a filing with the U.S. Supreme Court challenges the legitimacy of an old court standard, established in New York Times v. Sullivan, that essentially allows media organizations to “falsely vilify, smear, and attack public figures with impunity.”
America’s legacy media outlets and corporations have, in recent years, become highly politicized. Donald Trump’s age? Huge problem. Joe Biden’s age? No big deal. Donald Trump’s government papers? A felony. Joe Biden’s government papers, in his garage no less? No big deal.
The case itself involves right-wing lawyer Alan Dershowitz and his attempt to defend Trump in an impeachment hearing, with help from the even more right-wing American Center for Law and Justice (whose ideology Unruh railed to disclose):
“We have filed a petition for writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court on behalf of Professor Dershowitz in his critical defamation case against CNN,” the ACLJ said.
“This case presents the court with an opportunity to reconsider whether the actual malice standard established in New York Times v. Sullivan remains consistent with the First Amendment’s original meaning and whether it adequately protects individuals’ reputational interests while preserving robust public debate.”
The problem with the law, the legal team said, is that there needs to be accountability for truth, constitutional fidelity, and a fundamental right to seek justice when wronged.
Dershowitz, a distinguished Harvard Law School professor emeritus and practicing attorney, testified to the Senate in 2020 when leftists were attacking Trump in one of several impeachment campaigns.
He explained why the Constitution would not authorize a conviction.
The legal team said, “In response to a question from Senator Ted Cruz (TX), Professor Dershowitz delivered a carefully crafted constitutional analysis that made critical distinctions about what conduct could and could not constitute an impeachable offense.”
That was that “actions motivated by ‘personal pecuniary interest’ – such as a president demanding a hotel with his name on it or a million-dollar kickback – would be ‘purely corrupt’ and present ‘an easy case’ for impeachment. This wasn’t a throwaway line. It was the central point of his constitutional argument.”
CNN, however, broadcast “to millions of viewers that Dershowitz had said the opposite of what he actually argued.”
The irony here, of course, is that WND itself has published numerous false claims about people it doesn’t like — particularly Barack Obama — falsehoods were were protected by Times v. Sullivan. And we can’t forget that WND, after five years of fighting defamation charges by a Tennessee car dealer who claimed that WND falsely claimed he was a “suspected drug dealer,” abruptly changed its tune just before the trial was to start and settled the lawsuit for an undisclosed amount and apologized to the man.
Unruh refused to bring any of this up, of course, and he also failed to give those on the other side of the case an opportunity to respond. Can’t have both sides of the story when the other side blows up your partisan argument, right?
Unruh also barely acknowledged one crucial aspect of this case: The 11th Circuit dismissed Dershowitz’s case four months earlier, pointing out that Dershowitz failed to prove that any untrue statements were knowingly made by the network’s commentors or producers to destroy his reputation. The SCOTUS gambit is an appeal, and a less biased outlet pointed out, the the Supreme Court has already refused to hear a similar case.