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IP: DO READ When the San Jose Mercury News libels a guy ...
From: Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>
Date: Tue, 05 Mar 1996 14:14:59 -0500
media.1187: When the San Jose Mercury News libels a guy ... To: David Yarnold Managing Editor San Jose Mercury News Fax: 408-298-1966 Fr: Mike Godwin Staff Counsel, Electronic Frontier Foundation Mr. Yarnold, Your reporters, Howard Bryant and David Plotnikoff, have published false information about me and about my organization, and they have done so in a way that has damaged both my reputation and my credibility. As a journalist as well as a lawyer, I am astonished by the reckless disregard for basic journalistic procedure in the story, which appears in March 3rd's edition of the San Jose Mercury News. To quote the AP Stylebook and Libel Manual (1990): "There is only one complete and unconditional defense to a civil action for libel: that the facts stated are PROVABLY TRUE. (Note well that word, PROVABLY.) Quoting someone correctly is not enough. The important thing is to be able to satisfy a jury that the libelous statement is substatially correct." Although the story is deeply inaccurate in countless respects, I shall confine myself to correcting only those false statements of fact that bear on me and my organization: Bryant and Plotnikoff write (with regard to the groups opposing the "decency" legislation): "Had the Internet community relinquished a no-law-at-all position, Taylor said, some compromise could have been reached." No one had ever taken a "no-law-at-all" position. EFF took the position that that existing laws already criminalized obscenity and child pornography on the Net, and that any new laws should be designed to plug whatever gaps there were in existing law. Hence our call for hearings, or for a study, neither of which occurred prior to passage of the Communications Decency Amendment. Neither Bryant nor Plotnikoff asked me to comment on this charge. Bryant and Plotnikoff write: "Example: In late February, Exon offered the first draft of his indecency bill to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of the key Internet community players, for critique and feedback. Sources say the EFF added five provisions that, in essence, would have gutted it by calling for a study and not providing for power to prosecute offenders." Same point as before. The power to prosecute offenders was clearly in the existing law. The question was whether it was appropriate to pass legislation that would make language that is perfectly legal in the San Jose Mercury News's print edition illegal if published in the online edition. Neither Bryant nor Plotnikoff asked me to comment on this charge. What's more, Senator Exon never "offered the first draft of his indecency bill" to EFF. Neither Bryant nor Plotnikoff asked me to comment on this charge. Bryant and Plotnikoff write: ''Exon was looking for input from both sides to forge something honest and reasonably constructed,'' Taylor said. ''Instead, EFF hoodwinked him. They lied to him, and for that reason, no one listened seriously to anything they said.'' It is simply a false statement of fact that EFF or I ever "hoodwinked" or "lied to" Senator Exon. Neither Bryant nor Plotnikoff asked me to comment on this charge. I remind you that accusations of dishonesty are libelous per se. Bryant and Plotnikoff write: Later, the EFF ''would call everyone names,'' Taylor said. ''(EFF lawyer Mike) Godwin would call us Nazi censors if we didn't agree with him. Talk about a way to get doors slammed in your face.'' I have never called anyone in this debate a "Nazi" or a "Nazi censor." Indeed, I'm on the record as being morally opposed to the use of such invidious comparisons. In an article published in Wired in 1994, I criticized online debates in which '[Nazi] comparisons trivialized the horror of the Holocaust and the social pathology of the Nazis.'" There is no clearer evidence that Bruce Taylor lied to your reporters than this quote. Neither Bryant nor Plotnikoff asked me to comment on this charge. I spent about an hour on the phone with David Plotnikoff as he researched this story. We spoke at great length about the success of the so-called "decency" lobby. It would have been trivial during that conversation for Plotnikoff to ask me about the specific statements made about me and about the Electronic Frontier Foundation. But neither Bryant nor Plotnikoff asked me to comment on the statements that Bruce Taylor made to your reporters. There are other inaccuracies in the story -- including the implication that "Enough is Enough!" is a "middle-of-the-road" pro-censorship group compared to the National Law Center for Children and Families. A tiny amount of research by your reporters would have revealed that the two organizations share an office suite in Fairfax, Virginia, (along with another religious-right pro-censorship group, the National Coalition for the Protection of Families and Children), and that they work together to promote the same agenda frequently. But had Bryant and Plotnikoff merely been "hoodwinked" by Bruce Taylor, that wouldn't have bothered me nearly so much. (The religious right misleads incompetent reporters all the time.) What bothers me immensely is that your newspaper blithely repeated false statements of fact about my organization and about me -- statements that damage my reputation by making me look incompetent, dishonest, and hypocritical. As someone who has long opposed the use of libel lawsuits to settle disputes of this sort (see my article on the subject in the current issue of Wired), I have to say that you may have made me turn the corner on libel law. At minimum, your reporters should publicly acknowledge that they did not interview me with regard to the specific statements made about me or about EFF by Bruce Taylor of the National Law Center for Families and Children. Mike Godwin Staff Counsel Electronic Frontier Foundation CA Bar Number: 178904
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- IP: DO READ When the San Jose Mercury News libels a guy ... Dave Farber (Mar 05)