The fact that the liberty of the press may be abused by miscreant purveyors of scandal does not make any the less necessary the immunity of the press.
These newspaper reporters... ever since Sullivan versus New York Times... have got a license to lie.
The media can allege corruption, but if I do the same against the media, I am gagging freedom of expression.
I wish there was some way to get the law changed. They can write anything about you after you're deceased and there's nothing you can do about it.
Nobody wants to get rid of the libel laws, but we want them to be fairer. If we drove down the costs you might end up with more people suing. The only people who can afford it now are the rich and the giant corporations.
Saying someone is gay who is gay no longer constitutes defamation or slander or libel. You cannot defame someone by telling the truth.
If when I am libelled I take no notice, the world believes the libel. If I sue, I have to pay about one hundred pounds' costs for the privilege, and gain the smallest coin the country knows for recompense.
There's no law preventing a journalist from publishing whatever they want.
I mean, in some cases with libel laws, you know, they can write things about people who have no course of action, because they can't afford to take legal action against them.
Regulation has never really worked unless it's hate speech libel etc.
There is no protection against slander.
In Britain, libel damages are small and people build them into the cost of doing business. In America, libel is very rare and much harder to prove, but the damages are enormous.
It is crazy to have Judith Miller in jail.
The press follow me. I sue them. That's the deal.
I am dumbfounded that there hasn't been a crackdown with the libel and slander laws on some of these would-be writers and reporters on the Internet.
Any time, every time, you can damn the Prime Minister and so long as it is not a lie and a criminal lie, nothing happens to you. You can say a lot of things. You can write books about him, damning him. So long as it is not a libel, go ahead.
I am not against freedom of speech, and I recognise the value of fair publication.
Journalists who make mistakes get sued for libel; historians who make mistakes get to publish a revised edition.
The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel.
There is a certain belief that so long as something is published in cyberspace there is no need to respect the laws of contempt or libel. This is mistaken.
Newspapermen learn to call a murderer "an alleged murderer" and the King of England "the alleged King of England" in order to avoid libel suits.
We're going to open up the libel laws. So when they write falsely, we can sue the media and we can get this story corrected and get damages. I would absolutely work to open up the libel laws. If you write something that's wrong, and at least, knowingly wrong but wrong, a person like me and other people can bring a lawsuits to have it corrected and to get damage.
I don't think that there is absolute freedom of the press. We operate under laws - against libel, for instance. The idea that there is some absolute press freedom is kind of a myth.
The libel laws in Australia are a lot tougher than they are in America.
Punishing libels public or private is foolish, because it does not answer the end, and because the end is a bad one, if it could be answered.
