#libel

[gwydionmisha]

Fans slam Posie Parker for suggesting trans ally David Tennant is a paedophile

Anti-trans activist Posie Parker insinuated that Doctor Who star David Tennant is a paedophile on social media – and it didn’t go down well.

I hope he sues for libel.

[jangillman]

🚨BREAKING: 🚨 WHISTLEBLOWER SAYS TRUMP ACCUSER E. JEAN CARROLL SECRETLY MET WITH DNC OFFICIALS, CONFESSED ON TAPE THAT HER ALLEGATIONS AGAINST PRESIDENT TRUMP ARE FALSE. An individual with "inside knowledge" of this meeting says that Carroll received $10 MILLION FROM THE DNC in addition to her MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR BOOK DEAL AND HEFTY FEDERAL LAWSUIT which is the reason that she FABRICATED these allegations against our President. She is also alleged to be CAUGHT ON THIS TAPE ADMITTING that she has in fact never actually met President Trump. Once again, TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING. Now it's time for him to TURN THE TABLES AND SUE THE PANTS OFF OF HER FOR DEFAMATION, SLANDER AND LIBEL! 🔥💪🏻

[mostlysignssomeportents]

David Enrich’s “Murder the Truth”

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in SAN DIEGO at MYSTERIOUS GALAXY on Mar 24, and in CHICAGO with PETER SAGAL on Apr 2. More tour dates here.

David Enrich's Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful is a brave, furious book about the long-running plan by America's wealthy and corrupt to "open up the libel laws" so they can destroy their critics:

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/murder-the-truth-david-enrich

Enrich is a veteran business reporter at the New York Times; he's reported extensively on high finance and sleaze, and has a knack for piercing the Shield of Boredom that protects finance crimes from scrutiny. His 2017 book The Spider's Web manages the nearly impossible trick of making the LIBOR-rigging conspiracy – which involved trillions, but in ways that were so baroque that hardly anyone noticed – comprehensible:

https://memex.craphound.com/2017/09/24/the-spider-network-a-novelistic-account-of-the-mediocre-rich-men-who-robbed-the-world-with-libor/

In taking on the libel-industrial complex – a network of shadowy, thin-skinned, wealthy litigation funders; crank academics; buck-chasing lawyer lickspittle sociopaths; and the most corrupt Supreme Court justice on the bench today – Enrich is wading into dangerous territory. After all, he's reporting on people who've made it their life's mission to financially destroy anyone who has the temerity to report on their misdeeds.

As such, Enrich's writing is extremely cautious, sometimes comically so, but always intentionally, in a way that highlights the absurd chilling effect his subjects are attempting to induce in all of us.

The book primarily concerns itself with the effort to overturn Sullivan, a 1964 Supreme Court case that established protections for media outlets that report on public figures and commit minor factual errors, provided that the errors were neither negligent nor malicious.

Since Sullivan, media outlets have held the upper hand when reporting on public figures. While Sullivan isn't a license to simply make stuff up about celebrities, politicians and business leaders, it does mean that if a reporter makes a minor misstatement, it's on the subject of the reporting to prove that the error was negligent and/or malicious.

Before Sullivan, most defamation litigation happened in state courts, and southern courts allowed lawmakers and cops to sue newspapers that reported on racial terror campaigns during the civil rights fight. The judgments involved were so large that many media outlets simply gave up on reporting on the intimidation, violence and murder taking place in the Jim Crow south.

True to form, Clarence Thomas has led the charge to dismantle a law that was key to the struggle for rights for Black people and other disfavored minorities. In Enrich's telling, Thomas's animus for Sullivan started during his confirmation hearings, when Anita Hill described his relentless sexual harassment of the lawyers who worked for him, including Hill. Being the subject of a media firestorm that painted him as a disgusting, cruel sex-pest seems to have inspired Thomas in a decades-long campaign to find a case that would let him tear down Sullivan, so that wealthy people could once again intimidate reporters into silence. Of course, Thomas's hatred for Sullivan only grew when Propublica revealed that he had taken numerous "gifts" from wealthy "friends" who had business before the courts, revelations that will forever make Thomas's name a synonym for corruption.

Enrich's cast of characters includes a clutch of whiny, ultra-rich axe-grinders, who finance (often in secret) lawsuits that are designed to chip away at Sullivan. Some are international looters or corrupt ex-Soviet oligarchs, but others are ideologues, committed to the principle of impunity for the powerful.

He also introduces us to the lawyers who wage these battles. As you might imagine, the kind of lawyer who sits up at night figuring out how to help wealthy, powerful people destroy their critics is often a crank themselves, with "colorful" personal relations that Enrich reports on with meticulous prose, including the many denials and non-denials his subjects sent when he sought comment.

As with his LIBOR book, Enrich does yeoman duty here unpacking complex matters that would be dull in a lesser writer's hands. The litigation strategies devised by Sullivan's enemies are always convoluted and are sometimes clever, much like the litigation strategies used to kill campaign finance limits (Citizens United) and abortion rights (Dobbs). Indeed, many of the financiers, think-tanks and lawyers behind those plots are also would-be Sullivan slayers.

The best of these legal gambits are actually rather clever – locating innocent people who've been genuinely wronged by Sullivan (as the saying goes, "hard cases make bad law") and then using them to undermine Sullivan, without actually helping them in any way. It's positively fiendish.

We're in a moment when a lot of powerful people are getting far more powerful, and abusing that power to commit wildly corrupt acts. The only way we'll know about this is if the press can freely report on their misdeeds. Murder the Truth is a vital guide to the next Citizens United, the next Dobbs – a campaign to take away your right to know about the next assault on your rights that plutocrats will launch.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/murder-the-truth-david-enrich

[p-redux]

PSA to those with reading comprehension issues on other blogs...

It's come to my attention that those with reading comprehension issues on other blogs think I said Sam and Steph met at the MET as in the MET Gala, just because I capitalized MET. 🤦‍♀️ I was just emphasizing the word met by capitalizing it to MET. Met aka the past tense of meet. To meet as in make someone's acquaintance. They meet is present tense. They met is past tense. Hope that's clear. If some people learned to READ and COMPREHEND properly, maybe you wouldn't be in the mess of your own making all these years. 🙄

As an aside, I don't know how many details my insider sources will let me share; we will see. But what I CAN (present tense) tell you is that Sam and Steph met (past tense of meet) many years ago and have known each other for a long time.

In addition, and once again, there was NO CHEATING involved. That's NOT what happened, so quit being a-holes by posting that. Also, writing LIES about someone publicly, which can damage their reputation, is considered LIBEL. So, unless you want to open yourselves up to being sued by Sam and/or Steph for making libelous statements about them, I'd delete those right quick.

[weemietime]

Wise words.

Some more fuckin' bullshit for the grinder.

[chaotic-orphan]

British🫵

Okay this is a low blow. How fucking dare you. You know it’s bad when I’m not speaking in caps, WTF!!! That is below the belt. How fucking dare you, you wee fuck. This is just slander.

[idverbhim]

[yestergaze]

Libel (1959) is a British courtroom drama starring Dirk Bogarde and Olivia de Havilland. It was based on a 1935 play of the same name written by Edward Wooll.  Bogarde's character brings a libel action to clear his name against the man who doubts if he really was the prisoner of war he claims to have been. Bogarde's role is the teasing center of a clever narrative. The film was nominated by the American Film Institute for inclusion in its 10 Top 10 list that honors the ten greatest American films in ten classic film genres. Libel was nominated in the category of courtroom drama.