When it in suggest negative implications for the rest of us, my feelings are more mixed.
Case in point, the defamation suit that may bankrupt the National Review:
National Review, founded by William F. Buckley Jr. in 1955, has had an enormous impact on the nation's politics. Its writers formulated the ideology that animated the quixotic Barry Goldwater campaign of 1964, and then Ronald Reagan's successful run for the White House in 1980. In the years since, National Review has often worked to keep Republican presidents focused on implementing its vision of conservatism, while bucking up the conservative troops when the movement has found itself out of power.Part of me hopes that The National Review gets sued into oblivion. It is a pernicious organization, and it has been since Buckley founded it, and filled it with Oh-So-Civilized support for segregation.
Today the magazine enjoys circulation roughly equivalent to that of The Nation, the American Left's leading journal of opinion, and more than twice that of William Kristol's The Weekly Standard, its primary competition on the Right.
And now, National Review may be fighting for its life.
Climate scientist Michael Mann is suing National Review and Mark Steyn, one of its leading writers, for defamation. It's a charge that's notoriously hard to prove, which is no doubt why the magazine initially refused to apologize for an item on its blog in which Steyn accused Mann of fraud. Steyn also quoted a line by another conservative writer (Rand Simberg) that called Mann "the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except that instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data." (Simberg and the free market think tank for which he works, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, are also named in the suit.)
The lawsuit has not been going well for the magazine. In July, Judge Natalia Combs Greene rejected a motion to dismiss the suit. The defendants appealed, and last week D.C. Superior Court Judge Frederick Weisberg rejected the motion again, opening the door for the discovery phase of the lawsuit to begin.
That's not all. On Christmas Eve, Steyn (who regularly guest hosts Rush Limbaugh's radio show) wrote a blog post in which he excoriated Greene, accusing her of incompetence, stupidity, and obtuseness. As a result of this outburst, the law firm that had been representing National Review and Steyn (Steptoe & Johnson) has dropped Steyn as a client and reportedly has plans to withdraw as counsel for the magazine as well.
Part of me worries that the Kochs will start funding SLAPP suits against in an attempt to intimidate real news gathering organizations.
And so I leave it with all of you: Which came out of the opened door - the lady, or the tiger?
H/t Salon.
2 comments :
I don't see any danger of a wave of Koch SLAPP suits. The claim that Mann's suit fell under SLAPP was ludicrous on its face.
SLAPP basically exists to fast track dismissal of nuisance defamation lawsuits filed for no purpose except to limit public discourse. That just wasn't the case here. Mann's reputation has clearly been harmed. There are vast legions of 'ditto heads' who BELIEVE that he committed scientific fraud because conservative media outlets keep telling them that he did. Given that he was CLEARED by no less then eight independent investigations this is the equivalent of journalists saying someone committed a crime AFTER they have been acquitted of it.
This lawsuit hasn't 'widened the standards' for defamation at all, and thus there is no reason to fear an increase in nuisance suits from the right. Defamation is exceedingly difficult to prove. It's just that accusing someone of something after they have been publicly cleared of it is TEXTBOOK defamation.
I agree with your basic thesis, I am concerned about blowback.
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