Threat Of Lawsuits

By Author: FIRELEAVES
Total Articles: 49
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The costs of defending against a lawsuit are high. Coverage of controversial subjects, hard-hitting editorials, and investigative reporting are particularly likely to attract libel suits. Consequently, local television stations, particularly those in small markets, tend to shy away from such reporting, according to a survey by the National Association of Broadcasters. Who threatens to sue? Businesspeople threaten to sue over consumer re-porting on pollution, car defects, and the like. Politicians threaten to sue over politically damaging material.

In recent years, the Supreme Court has let stand awards of more than $2 million each in punitive damages made to individuals who Omega Speedmaster Replica Watches sued a daily newspaper and a net-work-owned television station. Punitive damages are now awarded in 60 percent of the cases won by plaintiffs against the media. Average awards exceed $2.8 million. In early 1990, in Sprague v. Walter, a jury in Pennsylvania awarded $31.5 million in punitive damages against the Philadelphia Inquirer ...
... for a story written in the early 1970s questioning a local prosecutor's handling of a homicide case. In 1988, in CBS Inc. v. Brown and Williamson Tobacco Corp. (485 U.S.993), the tobacco company sued a Chicago-owned CBS affiliate for libel, arguing that its advertisements had been misrepresented. CBS countered that the piece in question was commentary and as such protected by the First Amendment. The court held that the station had falsely accused the tobacco firm of soliciting young smokers as customers.

Private individuals and corporations are not the only ones able to bring legal pres-sure to bear on the media. As we mentioned in Chapter 3, in May 1986, then-CIA director William Casey suggested that the Justice Department consider prosecuting NBC News for violation of a 1950 law prohibiting disclosure of "communications intelligence." The NBC News report to which Casey objected concerned the trial of accused spy Ronald Pelton.

Another example of the power of lawsuits came in August 1995, when ABC News agreed to apologize twice in prime time—during halftime of the broadcast of Monday Night Football and on Day One—for a report broadcast on the latter program that contended that Philip Morris and R. J. Reynolds controlled and manipulated nicotine levels in cigarettes to addict smokers. The apology was the settlement of two lawsuits by the tobacco companies charging ABC News with libel. The case against ABC News turned on a single word, "spike." In its report on Tag Heuer Replica Watches how Philip Morris makes cigarettes, ABC contended that the company "spiked" cigarettes by adding nicotine in the manufacturing process. Because the production process removes nicotine from tobacco leaves used for filler, Philip Morris contended that it was "recombining" the ingredients, not spiking. The settlement aroused fears among employees that ABC might no longer be as vigilant in protecting news, particularly since Capital Cities, ABC's parent company, had been acquired by the Walt Disney Company. Both the correspondent on the Day One segment and its producer refused to sign the settlement.