Libel Suits and Press Freedom

Report Outline
Growing Magnitude of Libel Awards
Basic Elements of the Law of Libel
Libel Suits and the First Amendment

Growing Magnitude of Libel Awards

Issues in Times Appeal of Alabama Judgment

The libel case from Alabama against the New York Times, appealed to the Supreme Court and to be argued before that tribunal in January, involves in essence the problem of protecting an individual's good name while allowing maximum freedom of expression in the press. The Times is seeking reversal of the judgment by a state court jury which in 1960 awarded damages of $500,000 to Police Commissioner L. B. Sullivan of Montgomery, the capital of Alabama. The jury determined that Sullivan had been libeled by a political advertisement which appeared in the New York newspaper during racial disturbances in Montgomery. The advertisement described the breaking up of a student demonstration by city police but did not refer to Police Commissioner Sullivan directly by name or office. Only 35 copies of the offending edition were circulated in Montgomery County, Alabama.

Briefs filed with the Supreme Court by the Times and by several newspapers as amici curiae argue that if the Alabama judgment is allowed to stand, the law of defamation will have been transformed from an instrumentality to protect private reputation into a device for insulating public authorities from legitimate criticism. The Supreme Court's finding may well decide the course of future libel actions stemming from racial trouble in the South. Suits based on the same Times advertisement have been filed by other Montgomery commissioners, by the city's mayor, and by James Patterson, who was Governor of Alabama at the time the advertisement appeared. Another $500,000 award has been made in one of these cases, in which a motion for a new trial is pending.

A different group of suits brought against the New York Times in Alabama courts—based on news stories by Harrison Salisbury reporting a reign of terror against Negroes in Birmingham—have been removed to federal court. Salisbury himself was indicted on 42 counts of criminal libel. At least five Alabama officials have filed libel actions, each asking damages of $500,000, against the Columbia Broadcasting System for its television coverage of the racial conflict in that state. Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker (Ret.) recently brought suit against a number of news organizations for a total of $23 million in damages for alleged libel in their accounts of his activities during the rioting over admission of James H. Meredith to the University of Mississippi in September 1962.