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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Judith Miller: A SLAPP Against Freedom |
| 2007-11-07 |
| Nothing gets a journalist’s attention like a subpoena. While authoritarian regimes silence critics by murdering or jailing them, journalists (and other critics) in the United States face gentler, but still effective, intimidation: libel lawsuits. Over the last few years, Islamists have tried silencing reporters, scholars, and citizens by suing them for defamation, often successfully. But recent legal cases in California, Massachusetts, and Minnesota suggest that the tactic may finally be backfiring, at least in the United States, if not in Britain, where libel laws overwhelmingly favor plaintiffs. The American lawsuits’ outcomes—poorly covered by the media—represent victories for the free expression and public participation that the First Amendment guarantees. In Minnesota, a third lawsuit didn’t involve journalists or SLAPP statutes, but it did threaten citizens’ right to petition or warn the government on public safety issues. It also prompted Congress to protect people retroactively who report suspicious behavior. The defendants were anonymous citizens whose complaints about what they considered suspicious behavior by six Muslim imams on a flight in late 2006 led US Airways to remove the clerics from the plane. In a 2007 federal lawsuit claiming discrimination, the imams sued the airline, the Minneapolis airport, and several of the passengers who had complained. But in August 2007, the “flying imams” dropped all claims against the passengers after Congress approved legislation to protect passengers from retaliatory lawsuits for reporting potentially terror-related activity. Under the measure, as in an anti-SLAPP law, if the plaintiffs cannot prove that a passenger lied in his complaint to the government, they can be held responsible for all court and legal fees. “The imams saw the handwriting on the wall,” said Representative Peter King, the New York Republican who promoted the bill. Gerry Nolting, a lawyer who represented a passenger, also without a fee, said that the imams might never have filed their suit if Minnesota had on its books an anti-SLAPP law like California’s. “Anti-SLAPP laws are a very powerful tool,” agreed Roger Myers, an attorney who specializes in using the law to defend journalists in libel claims. “There has been a fairly dramatic decline in the number of libel cases being filed here in California.” Last May, the Islamic Society of Boston dropped its suit against the Boston Herald, a local Fox news channel, journalist Steven Emerson, and 14 others. The Society had accused the defendants of libel and of infringing its civil rights by claiming that it had funded terrorist organizations, received money from Saudi Arabia, and bought land for a mosque below market value from the City of Boston. |
| Posted by:KBK |
| #3 Too bad we can't sue the Journos for malpractice. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2007-11-07 13:37 |
| #2 Phelps comes immediately to mind, (Note we've had a deafening silence from those assholes lately.) |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2007-11-07 12:45 |
| #1 now the country needs to take the next step forward - start suing the sh*(% out of them. |
| Posted by: Unutle McGurque8861 2007-11-07 04:43 |