It’s incredibly difficult to give credit to our “Grab ‘em by the pu**y” president for anything. His executive order on “religious liberty” is nothing but a license to marginalize the LGBT community. Trumpcare may also be a license to discriminate against poor people or those with disabilities. But it’s difficult to understand why many on the left would be against Trump wanting to make media libel laws more strict. While it’s true that Trump may be doing this to scare his critics, the positive benefits of a law could be far reaching.
Freedom of the press has always been a good thing, but that doesn’t give the press an excuse to lie, especially when it can hurt somebody physically, mentally or financially. Before social media, somebody didn’t have to worry as much about their reputation being ruined. But now, misinformation spreads like a virus, and there is little anybody can do to stop it.
As ABC News notes, libel is defined as making a false statement of fact while knowing it is false or having reckless disregard for the truth. One can easily prove a news source made a false statement, but proving it is malice is a lot more difficult, and it shouldn’t be. Most of the “false” statements made by columnists these days are malicious, or at least they were copied from a malicious source.
The Daily Mail is the newspaper that is the most notorious for this. Even though their main outlet is based in the UK, they have branched out to Australia and the United States as well. Some of their recent libelous stories include one where they claimed George Clooney’s fiancé’s mother opposed their forthcoming marriage based on religious grounds, and another one in which J.K. Rowling accused members of her church for being bigoted at her single motherhood. Then, there is the recent article the Mail published about Melania Trump’s career as a professional model going beyond, um, professional.
Since the stories about J.K. Rowling and Melania Trump originated in the UK, both women were able to take legal action and were offered huge settlements from the British tabloid, which also deleted the stories. George Clooney spoke out against the Daily Mail rather than suing them. But it appears their libelous articles will not stop, especially since many other news sources use the tabloid as their main source of information – something that would have been unthinkable just 15 years ago.
Some may remember a 2001 article in Slate about monkey fishing. It caused a big uproar since it appeared to be made up – something the author of the article fully admitted in 2007. Having a website post fabricated information was a big deal in the ‘00s, but it’s pretty much the norm now. And it’s always done with an agenda to humiliate a certain person, group, or political party. Here are just some recent examples:
- Pizzagate: A conspiracy theory that falsely linked Hillary Clinton to a fabricated child sex trafficking ring out of a D.C. pizza restaurant went viral and was picked up by many right wing media sites.
- In November of 2014, Rolling Stone wrote an article about an alleged gang rape that was proven to be a complete hoax
- In 2013, the New York Post published their infamous “Bag Men” story that mistakenly insinuated that two young men pictured on their cover were involved in the Boston Marathon bombing.
- In trying to push the “War against Christmas” theory, both Breitbart and Fox News falsely reported that a Jewish family tried to get the play “A Christmas Carol” cancelled at a Lancaster, PA elementary school.
The list goes on and on. As divided as both the left and the right are these days, it would be great if both could team up to stop fake and inflammatory stories from spreading. Strengthening media libel laws would certainly be a step in the right direction.