[Seattle-editorial] some legal news from imc-dc folks

[sheri at speakeasy.org]

-----Original Message-----
From: John W [mailto:john at conflictresolver.com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2004 07:46 AM
To: stevec at riseup.net
Cc: imc-legal at lists.indymedia.org, bergman at ziplip.com
Subject: Re: [Imc-legal] [Fwd: introduction]

We just held a workshop on libel issues at the DC IMC last week with a 
local journalism professor and an attorney who does media legal work. 
There was an audio group there who recorded the presentation and are 
editing together a final piece.  I'll post a link to it when it's 
available.

The DC IMC editorial group has made a practice of outright deleting, not 
just hiding, material that is clearly extremely libelous (i.e. unfounded 
allegations that a private individual committed a crime, etc.).  These 
are usually cases that seem so over-the-top that it seems like they're 
designed to snarl the DC IMC in a nasty legal situation.  Thankfully, 
it's not something that comes up often.

One of the disturbing bits of information that came out of the 
discussion was the degree to which a publisher can be held at fault for 
material it distributes that was written by another source (from a 
website on libel: "Libel can be found not only in news stories, but also 
letters to the editor, cartoons, classified ads, display ads and 
electronic publications. Again, it doesn't matter who's saying it. If we 
print it, we're responsible for it").

Could you post a link to the questionable article so folks can have a 
look?  Some issues that come into play is the degree to which the 
individual being allegedly defamed is a public official, which in some 
cases can give you much wider latitude of what's allowed without being 
considered libelous.

John
dc imc
p.s. Just to be clear, since there are IMC'rs from all over the global 
network here, I'm only talking about US defamation law.  It's definitely 
quite different on a nation by nation basis.

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