Posted by Eugene Volokh:
More on <i>Bloomington Pantagraph</i> v. Michael Moore:
Last week, I posted [1]this item (go to the earlier post to see the
links):
I've had the nastygram sent by the Pantagraph to Michael Moore,
complaining about Moore's alleged partial fictionalization of a
Pantagraph headline put up here. (The page will disappear soon, so
you might want to avoid linking directly to that page; before that
happens, I'll copy it to a permanent home and update this post
accordingly, but I'm on the road now and can't do that.)
Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 apparently portrayed the Pantagraph as
saying, in a large headline accompanying a Dec. 19, 2001 news
story, "LATEST FLORIDA RECOUNT SHOWS GORE WON ELECTION"; the
Pantagraph says that this was a caption accompanying a Dec. 5, 2001
letter to the editor, and thus just the newspaper's summary of what
the letter was saying, rather than the newspaper's characterization
of the actual news. . . .
Moore's lawyers have apparently now responded; I haven't seen a copy
of their letter, but here's the excerpt from [2]the Pantagraph's
latest article on this:
New York-based lawyer Devereux Chatillon of the law firm
Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal sent the letter to J. Casey Costigan,
the Bloomington attorney representing the newspaper. . . .
[T]he letter claims Moore did nothing "misleading" when the
headline ("Latest Florida recount shows Gore won election") that
originally appeared above a Dec. 5, 2001, letter to the editor was
altered in both the font and size of the type for the movie and
made to look like a news story from a Dec. 19, 2001, edition of The
Pantagraph. . . .
Hmm -- seems to me that quoting a headline to a letter to the editor
without making it clear that it came from the letter-writer is indeed
misleading; the reasonable viewer would assume that the newspaper is
endorsing the assertion, rather than simply characterizing it. I can
certainly see why a lawyer contemplating litigation would refuse to
make such a concession; but it seems to me that self-described
documentary creators should be held to a somewhat different standard.
References
1. http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_08_00.shtml#1091648630
2. http://www.pantagraph.com/stories/081204/new_20040812033.shtml
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