Can media repeat wild charges without fear of
being sued?
Philadelphia Inquirer
That's what the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is being asked
in a case that's interested news orgs across the nation. In 1995, the
West Chester Daily Local News
reported that a councilman called two other politicians "queers," "liars," "criminals," "draft dodgers" and "child molesters." The men sued the councilman and the Daily Local News. The newspaper's lawyer says: "If a reporter can't publish what one official says about another official... it robs the public of an essential part of information about how government works."
> "This was name-calling between politicians," says lawyer (NYT/r.r.)
NY Post accuses NY Times of putting out "News by Saddam"
New York Observer
Oh, baloney, says Times executive editor Howell Raines (not using those exact words). "I understand there are other people who approach these tasks with different kinds of agendas," he tells Sridhar Pappu. "And we live in a time when there's a lot of ideological journalism going on. I think it's interesting, but it has nothing to do with what we do, which is make our journalism as straight and as energetic and competitive as we can." PLUS: Pappu says the Washington Post war correspondent Anthony Shadid has "provided the sharpest, most elucidating work among the thousands of reporters funneling millions of inches of copy."
Posted at 7:45:02 AM
