Two newspapers in Florida sued by politician shows boundaries of 1stAmendment

MIAMI - DADE COUNTY - Carol Forsloff - Jeff Green, who lost his bid to be a Democratic candidate for a Senate
seat in Florida has sued two of the states newspapers for libel.

Both the St. Petersburg Times and the Miami Herald and its reporters are

being sued.  The newspapers are accused of libeling Green both online
and in print and putting sullying his character so that he lost his bid
for political candidacy.  The suit also maintains Greene is entitled to a
total of $500 million in punitive and compensatory damages.


The suit accuses
the newspapers of "destroying the personal, business and political
reputation" of Greene by accusing him of "serious crimes."  To do that,
Green alleges, the newspapers "abandoned journalistic integrity."


Lawsuits for libel are often more difficult to prosecute because the
protections for public figures, like politicians, are not the same as
for private individuals.  In both cases, however, there has to be
evidence that the information printed is false.


ExpertLaw
explains it this way:  "Under the First Amendment of the United States
Constitution, as set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1964 Case, New York Times v Sullivan,
where a public figure attempts to bring an action for defamation, the
public figure must prove an additional element: That the statement was
made with "actual malice". In translation, that means that the person
making the statement knew the statement to be false, or issued the
statement with reckless disregard as to its truth."


Journalistic integrity has been questioned more frequently in the news,
as is the definition of what constitutes a journalist.  For example,
Julian Assange, the creator of Wikileaks that leaked U.S. security
documents, maintains his is not a newspaper so the website doesn't have
the same issues concerning what it can and cannot do, but at the same
time courts have examined the issue and observed First Amendment
protections extend to journalists and not just anyone writing anything.


How this present lawsuit evolves will be another test of journalistic
integrity vs public figures and what the media needs to do, or be
cautious about, in even writing about politicians.