The initial draft of NC Senator Steve Goss’ bill to bring blogs into NC’s libel law acheived what little else in post-colonial America has done: criminalized libel. Like a libel defense, I suppose a drafting mistake can be an honest error.
Here’s the bill: http://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/BillLookUp/BillLookUp.pl?Session=2009&BillID=S46
Back in my media law days, I was a bit dismayed that a plaintiff had to proove more to win a case if that plaintiff was well known. Celebrities and other public figures have to show some intent, or extreme recklessness, on the defendant’s part. It always seemed to me a gossipy public ought to pay the price if overindulgent.
A hefty consideration in such a discussion is the medium by which folks hear/read news (and the medium through which subjects of the news can respond). An article in the city paper reads differently than an email from your buddy (and to parallell that last parenthetical, I find quite inaccurate the notion that all public figures can ‘respond’ to slightly libelous claims to an equally attentive audience – some public figures hold loudspeakers, sure, but others are made public and are denied any platform from which to respond).
So where do blogs fit? My hunch is that it doesn’t matter much. Imagining the non-institutional blogger (ie, not the live version of The Times, etc), it seems a blogger is already covered by libel laws – hard to see how hitting “publish” is not a “publication” under most states’ common law. As for semi-libeling against public figures, bloggers will likely have an easier time in court than major papers, as it should be easier to show the blogger was not malicious…hey, just passing on rumors.
