Politics, Law, & History

Defamation & the Media

Recommendations from Richard J. Peltz-Steele, JD, Chancellor Professor

Follow at TheSavoryTort.com

Richard J. Peltz-Steele, JD, is Chancellor Professor at the University of Massachusetts Law School and attorney licensed in Washington, D.C. He teaches and researches in torts, freedom of information law, and comparative law. Peltz-Steele is co-editor of a book on law and development and author of textbooks on tort law and access to information. He serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Media Law and Ethics and the Journal of Civic Information and participates on the legal education committee of the International Law Section of the American Bar Association.

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Defaming the Dead
Don Herzog
Book

Don Herzog takes up a peculiar problem in defamation law by asking whether the dead can be defamed. The question is deceptively simple, because to answer it, one has to figure out what we mean to accomplish with the torts of libel and slander. Even more fundamentally, the question becomes existential: Does personal identity matter when we are gone from the earth? Thus, through the modest vehicle of a quirky problem in media law, and with sense of humor intact, Herzog explores big questions about the very nature of law and life.

first-link
This American Life
“Tarred and Feathered” (ep. 522)
Podcast

There are podcasts on media law and even defamation cases, if you want to go all in. But I prefer discrete stories about people’s real experiences with reputational harm. Without empathy, it’s too easy to think about defamation as a cold legal problem or an antithesis to free speech. To this end, I recommend the grandaddy of podcasts, Ira Glass’s This American Life. 2014’s “Tarred and Feathered” opens with a compelling historical account from writer Jon Ronson, who wrote a book about public shaming. The episode explores the dark side of internet democratization with gifted producer Stephanie Foo, and at last, with reporter Luke Malone, tests listener empathy with a rarely heard from class of the disaffected: pedophiles.

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Denial
Drama
Film

Denial is a courtroom drama based on a true story and 2005 book by protagonist, historian, and State Department special envoy Deborah E. Lipstadt. In an earlier book, in the 1990s, Lipstadt had criticized a Holocaust denier, who then sued her in London. At the time, UK defamation law was more plaintiff-friendly than American law. Because truthful statements cannot be defamatory, the case boiled down to whether the Holocaust happened—thus prompting the viewer to contemplate the efficacy of contemporary defamation law. Rachel Weisz plays Lipstadt. There also is a fabulous fictionalization on stage, Denial, authored in 1999 by Peter Sagal of NPR fame.

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