"The Ninth Circuit Court ruled in Obsidian Finance Group LLC and Kevin Padrick vs. Crystal Cox (2014)[178] ruled that liability for a defamatory blog post involving a matter of public concern cannot be imposed without proof of fault and actual damages.[179]
Bloggers saying libelous things about private citizens concerning public matters can only be sued if they’re negligent i.e. the plaintiff must prove the defendants negligence – the same standard that applies when news media are sued.
The federal appellate court thus essentially said that journalists and bloggers are one and the same when it comes to the First Amendment[180] and, in the words of Eugene Volokh, a professor at the UCLA School of Law, that nonprofessional press, especially bloggers, "for First Amendment purposes, have the same rights as others do, as for example the institutional media does."[181]
The unanimous three-judge panel rejected the argument that the negligence standard established for private defamation actions by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1974's Gertz v. Robert Welch Inc. only applied to "the institutional press."[181] "The Gertz court did not expressly limit its holding to the defamation of institutional media defendants," Judge Andrew Hurwitz wrote for the three-judge panel. "And, although the Supreme Court has never directly held that the Gertz rule applies beyond the institutional press, it has repeatedly refused in non-defamation contexts to accord greater First Amendment protection to the institutional media than to other speakers."[181] Hurwitz wrote: "The protections of the First Amendment do not turn on whether the defendant was a trained journalist, formally affiliated with traditional news entities, engaged in conflict-of-interest disclosure, went beyond just assembling others' writings or tried to get both sides of a story. …
In defamation cases, the public-figure status of a plaintiff and the public importance of the statement at issue -- not the identity of the speaker -- provide the First Amendment touchstones."[182]"
Source
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
BLOGS are the ONLY "Medium of Communication" those Exposing Corruption Have. START a BLOG, Expose Corruption. You are Media; You are a Journalist, Speak Up, Post Facts, Documents and Proof. ~ You No Longer Have to Fear the MONOPOLY of FREE Speech in which Institutional Press has so long held. ~ News By the People for the People, BLOGS.
Saturday, April 5, 2014
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
"I believe that keeping silent when an injustice is taking place is condoning it." Crystal Cox Case
"
"
Crystal Cox Whistleblower
I quote India Today Group chairman and editor-in-chief Aroon Puri, from indianexpress.com:
The role of the media is to question and uncover facts that interested parties are keen to suppress and verify information, rather than resort to activism and drive an agenda, a panel discussion on responsible journalism at the CII National Conference has brought out.
He goes on further to say, according to his rulebook on journalism, “the biggest poison in journalism is journalists, proprietors and editors who have an agenda, who have to promote a point of view or an interest” and that activism should be nowhere near journalism. But if it “happens as a byproduct”, he said “I am okay with it”
He said according to his rulebook on journalism, “the biggest poison in journalism is journalists, proprietors and editors who have an agenda, who have to promote a point of view or an interest” and that activism should be nowhere near journalism. But if it “happens as a byproduct”, he said “I am okay with it”
“Activism is a good idea and a lot of people are full-time activists. But by being activist, media gives good activists a bad name. The job of the media is not to be activist but to be active. Our training has been to avoid activism and to be scrutinising,”
"
The “new media” obviously concerns many politicians like Feinstein, who show the same hostility to bloggers as her predecessors once showed to the media before New York Times v. Sullivan. While the issues are not identical between the torts doctrines and media shield laws, the ruling undermines the argument that there is a clear line between bloggers and conventional reporters in dealing with public disputes and allegations. We have still not resolved how to draw the line (if such a line is possible) between conventional and new media. What is significant is that this court is refusing to expose bloggers to the type of pre-Sullivan liability that would dramatically chill Internet speech.
Crystal L. Cox, Whistleblower Media, Poking a Big of Fun at Big Media"
Source
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)