Freedom Of Speech In Australia

12. New York Times v Sullivan (502)- First off you need to know that libel is the written defamation of character. A person who believes their name and character have been harmed can sue. In this case, the supreme court declared that freedom of the press takes precedence—at least when the defamed individual is a public official.

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear” (George Orwell). Whether the opinion is of extreme offense or not, censorship is not the answer nor is the limitation of the freedom of speech. Emerging the truth, can only be possible through the opposition of ideas, thus with no boundries, the full protection of freedom of speech is a necessary quality of any society.

The legal issues, in this case, is the defendant, who published the story about the plaintiff, liable for defamation of character and invasion of privacy? The matter of whether Baba Wawa is guilty of defamation happens when she publishes a photo of Howard Huge implying that he was mad and choking the dog. Beauty Queen was cringing and then goes on to make a statement that couple declined to permit the dogs to be seen and that no one had seen the dogs since the photos were taken. The publication and statement ruin the couple’s image. Their friends are avoiding them, and they are not enabling them to show the dogs. There is also an issue of whether the Star News is guilty of defamation by allowing Baba Wawa to distribute the story using their publication. The matter of whether Baba Wawa is guilty of invasion of privacy occurs when she takes pictures of the two without their permission.

When Martha Stewart was accused the first problem presented was the Media and how her case was going to be handled. Martha’s Stewart lawyer Robert Morvillo along with Martha’s publicist and show producers orchestrated a plan to keep Martha’s image as clean and honest as possible. They didn’t waste time by using the media, Martha’s TV show and Magazine to defend her position and manipulate the public opinion towards Martha’s innocence. It is clear that in court previous information and announcements of her innocence will create in the future juror’s minds the reasonable doubt needed to find her innocent. The judge immediately imposed a gag order to control the flow of information and to avoid

Free speech has long been recognized as a common law right, in the political arena of Australia, free speech concept has its implication in the constitution, but in other cases, it is not provisioned to have constitutional protection. In England, article 10 states that everyone has the right to freedom of expression, which includes the freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without State interference. However, there are some limitation of the right, if deteriorated national security, public safety, cause crime or harm other's reputation. Because Australian has the subordinate relationship with England, Australia has been greatly

Last week, the court saw the dismissal of a defamation lawsuit filed by the now-Catholic priest, Auxiliary Justice Malcom Gray ruling the reports published by News Corporation Australia as ‘substantially true’.

The court case of New York Times vs Sullivan was a case that involved public officials and how they were libeled in the press in the year of nineteen sixty four. L.B. Sullivan was one of three elected commissioners of Alabama. The respondent was L. B. Sullivan was a public official from Alabama and brought a lawsuit against an clergymen, a negro and against a petitioner of the New York Times Company. L.B. Sullivan sued all of these people because he felt that he was libeled in a advertisement of the New York Times. The case had to deal with if the constitutional protections of speech and press limit the states power to award damages for the libel action brought by a public official against the critics of his official conduct.

New Yorker Magazine it states that there must be clear intent to tarnish one’s reputation in order for libel tort law to come into effect. This case was very similar in regards that there was enough evidence that suggest there was intent to hurt the reputation of those mentioned in the articles. Also in the case Anderson v. Liberty Lobby it states the plaintiff must be able to prove that there was in fact damage done to one’s reputation and be able to proof to judges that there was actual malice. As with this case, the court of appeals must take in consideration if the ruling can be made in favor of the plaintiff and that if the summary judgement would go in favor of the plaintiff. The judges want to make sure that they are not wasting time and that there was actual damage done to the plaintiff which can be awarded for punitive

The most famous defamation case, which still sets precedent in today's cases, is New York Times v. Sullivan (1964). New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) is the leading case on the question of defamation liability for media defendants. The case, heard before the Supreme Court, declared that public officials and figures could not recover for an alleged defamation unless they can prove both that the statement was false, and was made with actual malice. This decision prevents the news media from reporting on false or slanderous stories. It protects the country's public icons seeing they are almost always in the spotlight. In addition to defamation hindering media, obscenity and pornography on the net have placed limitations on what some websites may provide in terms of content.

To sum, the case is about an advertising the newspaper included some inaccurate story about the civic leaders, civil right events, and Sullivan. Sullivan (a public official) believed that the defamatory comments that were made of him were making a negative impact on his life, thus he sued the New York times. The court in Alabama at the time ruled “The law … implies legal injury from bare facts of publication itself, falsity and malice are presumed, general damages no need to presume.” Thus, the court from Alabama gave Sullivan a compensation of five hundred thousand dollars. New York times decided to take this case to the supreme court because they believe their 1st amendment rights were being violated. Therefore, a new question arose whether the first amendment protects defamatory, false statements concerning public officials? The court ruled that the 1st amendment does protect the publication of all statements, even false ones, concerning the conduct of a public official except when the statement was made with actual malice. Once again, we notice the irony of freedom of speech the issue is citizens are not informed that under the 1st amendment there is sufficient rights guarantee. It is not solely having the right to express our emotions towards the government, it is to expose information to citizens and have the citizens decided for themselves. Democracy does not work if the government or public official try to hide information from its citizens. Democracy function when there is a clear majority of press that expose the truth and allow people to determine what the issue is. Press must be able to protect us against an overreaching government. Sometimes executive power tries to control the press because they do not want to inform the truth about that for example the Watergates scandal, Edward Snowden, Wiki leaks and

The Plaintiff, Sullivan, was one of three Commissioners of Montgomery, Alabama who sued the Defendant, the New York Times, for printing and releasing an full page ad about the civil rights movement taking place in the south that defamed Sullivan. The ad was called "Heed Their Rising Voices" and it caused a "wave" of terror that had been directed against those who took place in the civil rights movement in the South. Some of the facts were false. The ad didn't single handily point out Sullivan, he claimed that it referred to him indirectly because he had oversight responsibility of the police. The Defendant stated that they didn't have any reason or proof to say the facts were false. No one put out the extra effort to see if the facts were false

Reviewing precedent of New York Times v. Sullivan about the right to make false statements. In this case, the Court ruled that states must prove that he or she had malice whining creating a false statement. This case is related to the United States v. Fields as it explains that speech is restricted for content reasons if and only malice can be proven. Another precedent is Texas v. Johnson as it demonstrates the right to disagreeable speech as he had the right to free speech when he burned his flag. The case related by the person’s speech as it would offends the doings by lying.

The Plaintiff, Sullivan sued the defendant, the New York Times Co. for printing an advertisement about the civil rights movement in the south and defamed the plaintiff. The Plaintiff was one of three Commissioners of Montgomery, Alabama, who claimed that he was defamed in a full-page ad taken out in the New York Times. The advertisement was entitled, “Heed Their Rising Voices” and it charged in part that a new wave of terror had been directed against those who participated in the civil rights movement in the South. Some of the details of the advertisement were false. Although the advertisement did not mention the Plaintiff by name, he claimed that it referred to him indirectly because he had failed to notice responsibility of the police.

Similarly, Ernest V. had dressed up as ‘Zombie Muhammad’ and sued a Muslim who had allegedly ‘pulled at his fake beard and damaged his sign’ which read “Muhammad of Islam” for assault. In court, Judge Mark Martin had chided Perce, saying that the First Amendment was not formed for escaping with foolish acts. This shows how freedom of speech could be abused by people to offend others and this is especially prevalent in America (Hananel, 2014).

The second major cas in that helped to clarify the meaning of libel was the court case of Crutis Publishing Co. v Butts. The case helped to clarify the meaning of defamation claims brought by private individuals. The case held that news organizations were protected from liability when printing allegations about public officials, although they may still be sued by public figures if the information they printed was recklessly gathered or if it was left unchecked. Again because it is difficult to prove either of theses, the press ended up with more freedom to print political corruption and scandal.