Protecting freedom of press preserves freedom of nation

A 1960 advertisement in The New York Times sought donations to help pay Martin Luther King Jr.’s legal costs. A subsequent defamation lawsuit led to the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark New York Times v. Sullivan decision.

What does it mean to us living here in Yamhill County to have a free press?

Let’s look at a quote from the late Madeleine Albright, who served as secretary of state for our country: “The temptation is powerful to close our eyes and wait for the worst to pass, but history tells that for freedom to survive, it must be defended, and that if lies are to stop, they must be exposed.”

The Heart of Competition

Rusty Rae Guest writer Rusty Rae is an award- winning editor, photojournalist and photo educator. Holder of a bachelor’s from Linfield and MBA from the University of Washington, he first worked for the N-R out of college. He returned six years ago, serving as sports editor, a staff photojournalist and associate editor of the ancillary publication Old Stuff. He’s traveled extensively in the U.S. and abroad. He and his wife, Sheila, reside in Mac.

The Founding Fathers were so sure the press must remain unencumbered by government censorship for the nation to remain free that they included the press in the First Amendment to the Constitution. 

The first 10 amendments, ratified in 1791, are known as the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment includes the following: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press … “

It seems obvious, but bears review: Freedom comes with responsibilities.

Newspapers shed light in the darkest corners with balanced, fact-based reporting of the life of a community.

We live and die by those rules of fairness of reporting. If a reportage mistake is made, we correct it as soon as we are aware.

Newspapers comment on the facts in opinion pieces called editorials, which include a point of view. Editorials are designed to encourage thought and debate.

An editorial is, by its very nature, biased. It reflects an opinion that some may accept and others reject.

That goes a step beyond a column — for example, from the sports editor, reflecting the writer’s perspective on a game, on a telling play or a player’s contribution to the outcome.

Ultimately, an editorial is designed to be that light that gets to the heart of an issue. It reflects a point of view designed to open minds and help frame debate on important issues.

Our community here in Yamhill County is comparatively small, yet that light is no less important than the light shown by newspapers such as The New York Times.

Over the years, freedom of the press has been expanded to include first news from the radio and later television. And television today is no longer just the big three network players of the 1950s — ABC, CBS and NBC — but an alphabet soup of cable channels, many with their own news organizations.

Today we also include much of internet-based social media as part of “the press” as well. By social media, we mean websites and the ubiquitous Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, et al.

The problem is that anyone with access to the World Wide Web can now be a reporter, whether or not they understand, or care about, the rules of honest journalistic reporting. Truth and fairness seem to have gone out the window with many of these so-called 24-7 “news” purveyors.

A prominent recent libel case highlights the standards the media needs to meet under our system of government to ensure it doesn’t cross a line established in constitutional law.

Back in mid-February, a libel suit brought against The New York Times by Sarah Palin, a former Alaska governor turned vice-presidential candidate, was thrown out by U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff. Rakoff said Palin and her legal team had failed to reach the high standard required for a public figure to make a valid case.

While the Palin case has little to do with us here in Yamhill County, it does give us a chance to explore a wider issue — the need for newspapers to be free to criticize public figures without fear of reprisal, thus shining a light in corners of darkness.

Let’s take a trip in the wayback machine to understand the underpinnings of the current law and why Palin’s suit didn’t pass judicial muster.

For those too young to remember, the 1960s were a time of tumult in the United States, not unlike today in many ways.

In the South, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the leaders of the civil rights movement. But King was targeted by Southern officials, who variously arrested him for speeding, loitering and such. He was even charged with perjury in his filing of a state income tax document.

In March of 1960, The New York Times carried a paid ad headlined “Heed Their Rising Voices” that sought donations for King’s defense team.

The ad told of the trials and tribulations of King and his followers in the South. In one paragraph, it called out the police in Montgomery, Alabama, for their treatment of peaceful student protesters.

The ad was marred by several inaccuracies, including the songs protesters sang, the number of times King had been arrested, and whether students had been expelled for protest actions.

Based on the inaccuracies, Montgomery Police Commissioner L.B. Sullivan asked the Times for a retraction. When the Times refused, Sullivan sued for defamation in a local court.

The judge ruled the inaccuracies were defamatory, and the jury returned a judgment of $500,000 against the newspaper. The Times appealed to the Alabama Supreme Court, which ratified the lower court decision, and then on the U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned it in a unanimous ruling.

It took four years for the legal process to play out, but by a 9-0 count, the Supreme Court said the lower court rulings violated the paper’s First Amendment rights. Given the protections afforded in the First Amendment, the justices ruled, any public official suing for defamation must prove the defendant made the defamatory statement with “actual malice.”

The court made proving libel subject to two further provisions as well: The defamatory statement must actually target the official, not just governmental policy, and that official must carry the burden of proving its falsity.

The court’s interpretation of the First Amendment protection focused on what it termed the “breathing space” required by the First Amendment for full and complete deliberation. It noted, “Erroneous statement is inevitable in free debate, and ... must be protected if the freedoms of expression are to have the breathing space that they need ... to survive.”

The Palin case arose from an editorial the Times published in June 2017.

The editorial cited an incident in which a man with a history of anti-GOP activity shot up a congressional baseball team’s practice session, wounding Republican Congressman Steve Scalise of Louisiana and four others. The editorial blamed zealous political rhetoric for the shooting.

Writing under deadline pressure the night of the shooting, then Editorial Page Editor James Bennet, hyper-focused on driving the point home and strike a note of public censure for the ready availability of both guns and incendiary rhetoric in our culture, added a sentence referencing the mass shooting six years earlier in which U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords was severely wounded.

Bennet said the “link to political incitement was clear” between that shooting and an earlier Palin campaign ad arraying crosshairs from the scope of a gun over targeted Democratic congressional districts, including Gifford’s Arizona district.

Unfortunately, Bennet never fact-checked his memory to see what the ad had actually said — a breach in process, but perhaps understandable given the duress he faced under deadline pressure.

Keep in mind, the print run for the New York Times was nearly 350,000 copies, and that takes more than four hours. In such a scenario, you simply can’t be late.

There were no facts tying the shooter to the Palin ad, only an inference on Bennet’s part. Adding insult to injury, the editorial was guilty of misrepresentation in saying the crosshairs were placed over the lawmakers, when it was actually their districts.

The Times published a correction the next day. When Palin sued anyway, its legal team termed the misrepresentation nothing more than an honest mistake that had been made under deadline pressure and promptly set it right.

Palin’s defense team could not offer any proof that Bennet acted out of malice or had a political ax to grind with Palin. And on those grounds, the case ended up getting thrown out.

A free press — be it the News-Register serving Yamhill County, the Oregonian serving the Portland Metro Area and environs, or The New York Times serving the whole country — must be given largely unfettered ability to report the news of the day. It must also be given the freedom to editorialize on government officials and their actions without fear of potentially ruinous reprisals.

As a matter of perspective, consider what is happening in the Federation of Russia today.

There is no free press in the Russian autocracy. Journalists are not allowed to shine the light of truth into dark corners, and that includes casting any doubts on the lies used to justify waging war on neighboring Ukraine.

If we are to remain free, our press must remain free. A free press is one of the cornerstones of freedom in our community and our nation.