With all the rights and luxuries we’re accustomed to in this modern age, it’s easy to forget that our nation was originally a unique experiment in personal liberties and the drafting of a Constitution that protects certain activities in a broad stroke. There are certain rights that our government doesn’t “grant” to citizens. Instead, these rights are “god-given.” Under the Bill of Rights, it’s clear that our government was intended to protect these rights, not delineate what areas they do or don’t apply to.
In particular, the First Amendment is emblematic of our Founding Fathers’ approach to governance, and it’s the clause relating to freedom of speech and the press that is today coming under fire from politicians who actually have a legitimate chance to become the next president of the United States.
Donald Trump, the fiery and inflammatory Republican front-runner who has now won primaries and caucuses in three of four early nomination contests, said in a Feb. 27 interview on Fox News that, if elected, he would “open up our libel laws” to sue publications that publish “purposely negative and horrible and false articles” to “win lots of money.”
Typical bombast aside, Trump’s beliefs about what the press should be run contrary to the ideals set out under the First Amendment. True, those who write “purposely false” articles should be subject to libel lawsuits and frequently are. But the notion that the press “has to be fair,” as Trump said in the interview, indicates an attitude that isn’t considered with what is fact or fiction but what is agreeable to a particular individual: Truth be damned.
That’s a dangerous position for anyone to advance. But when it’s being pushed by the man who looks increasingly likely to win the Republican nomination for presidency, it’s time to be seriously concerned.
The judicial standard that is applied to libel lawsuits is called the New York Times “Actual Malice” standard, named after a 1964 Supreme Court case that saw the newspaper sued by an Alabama police chief who felt he had been personally defamed by a pro-Martin Luther King ad that contended the chief had jailed the civil-rights activist in order to put a stop to the movement he led.
Though the ad contained some minor factual errors, the Warren Supreme Court held in a unanimous decision that even false statements about public officials are considered protected speech, as long as they aren’t made with “actual malice,” meaning a “reckless disregard for their truth or knowledge of their falsity.”
This was a landmark decision in our country’s protection of the press. It enshrines the uniquely American value that all speech is protected, that the rights of the speaker are more important than the feelings of the listener. It protects watchdog reporting by ensuring that there won’t be a chilling effect on smaller newspapers, which might be afraid of even the potential of a libel lawsuit. This could cause them to avoid any articles that, in Trump’s words, could be considered “hit pieces,” or, in other words, stories that reveal uncomfortable truths without couching them in favorable rhetoric.
When considering massive changes to something like the First Amendment, we have to look beyond the surface level to see the deeper ramifications of policy. Should news organizations hide behind libel protection in order to publish articles of dubious fact? Probably not. But should media outlets be subject to costly lawsuits simply because they had the audacity to report on something that someone else doesn’t want to become public? The Daily Iowan Editorial Board believes the latter to be a far more dangerous precedent to set.