WELCOME to the debut of “The Truth Is!”, a blog of reporting and commentary that aims to be informative, thoughtful and provocative. At least initially, the blog will have a strong heartland flavor by virtue of the connection of a number of us to Cowles family journalism. I am former editor of the Des Moines Register’s opinion pages. Another contributor, Michael Gartner, is former editor of the paper; he later served as president of NBC News. Another former Register editor who has agreed to contribute, Geneva Overholser, is director of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg school of journalism. Followers of the blog will have access also to the work of Herbert Strentz of Des Moines, a close Register and other newspaper watcher who once headed Drake University’s journalism school. Bill Leonard, a longtime Register editorial writer, will add insights.

“The Truth Is!” will be supervised by my daughter, Marcia Wolff, a communications lawyer for 20 years with Arnold and Porter (Washington, D.C.). Invaluable technical assistance in assembling and maintaining the blog is provided by my grandsons Julian Cranberg, a college first-year, and Daniel Wolff, a high school senior.

If you detect a whiff of nepotism in this operation, so be it. All of it is strictly a labor of love. —Gil Cranberg

Friday, May 3, 2013

Gilbert Cranberg: HOW ANTHONY LEWIS DROPPED THE BALL ON LIBEL

Anthony Lewis, the former New York Times reporter and columnist who died March 25 at 85, belonged in the company of Walter Lippmann and other great American journalists. As the blurb on the cover of one of his books said, “No one writes more lucidly about legal subjects than Anthony Lewis.” 

He was not only lucid, but fair. He was a huge fan of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, the decision that saved his employer’s paper from financial ruin, but he saw flaws in the ruling and wrote about them in depth. Even so, his cheerleading for the Sullivan opinion pretty much drowned out the reservations. And because he was so influential it may well have inhibited reform of libel law. 

The law badly needs reform, for it adequately protects neither reputation nor the press. 

Editors and news directors live in dread of libel suits, which can be costly, distracting and intrusive. The press wins most of the suits against it but in the process takes such a battering it’s difficult to tell winners from losers.  

I am a co-author of the book “Libel Law and the Press, Myth and Reality”. Our extensive interviews of libel plaintiffs established that correcting the alleged falsity of accounts about them is their chief concern. 

The New York Times v. Sullivan formula for resolving public figure libel suits, the actual malice rule, fails to address this central concern. Instead, it focuses on what was in the author’s mind at the time the disputed material was written – whether he or she knew it was false or had serious doubts about it. A libel action, therefore, sets off a far-ranging mind-search which would be intolerable if, say, a congressional committee attempted it, but which the government authorizes when it tolerates libel suits. Meanwhile, alleged falsity, the issue that most motivates plaintiffs to sue, most often goes unaddressed. This is also an issue in which the public may well have a stake.

Libel law answers the wrong question. Anthony Lewis’s perch at the Times uniquely positioned him to influence libel law reform. He had the powers of persuasion to get something done. Too bad he did not take New York Times v. Sullivan to the next level.

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