Murder the Truth

Starred review from January 6, 2025
New York Times editor Enrich (Servants of the Damned) offers a chilling deep dive into “a largely under-the-radar legal movement that is weaponizing obscure field of libel law.” Ever since the Supreme Court’s unanimous 1964 decision in New York Times Company v. Sullivan, plaintiffs classified as public figures have been required to prove that individuals or entities they sue for libel acted with “knowledge that was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” The impact of that ruling, Enrich explains, was to allow journalists to “investigate and write about those in the public sphere, even if they accidentally got a fact wrong.” But in recent years Sullivan has come under attack as libel suits have been brought, or threatened, against newspapers, both local and national, in a concerted right-wing effort to give a conservative Supreme Court an opportunity to overrule Sullivan, according to Enrich. He profiles those caught up in the lawsuits, including Colorado journalist Conrad Swanson, whose investigation into public safety concerns about a new residential development were stymied when his newspaper was threatened with a libel action, as well as those pursuing Sullivan’s demise—like billionaire Peter Thiel, who covertly financed a libel lawsuit against Gawker that led to the website’s shuttering, and the growing “clique of high-powered lawyers who... specialize in attacking journalists” on behalf of the powerful. It’s an unsettling look at a dire threat to democracy.

February 1, 2025
A searching account of the modern right-wing push to silence criticism by suing for libel. Wrote jurist Robert Bork in 1984, libel suits "may threaten the public and constitutional interest in free, and frequently rough, discussion." That rough discussion, notesNew York Times business investigative reporter Enrich, has lately included revelations that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is the recipient of hundreds of thousands of dollars in unreported gifts and that Justice Samuel Alito's home was flying "a flag associated with the January 6 uprising...just as he was poised to hear a high--stakes case about the attempted insurrection." Knowing of both scandals, Enrich holds, is most definitely in the public interest--and precisely the sort of thing that Alito and Thomas' fellow ideologues are trying to suppress through libel lawsuits that may or may not be mere nuisances but that would drain the resources of most small publications, dissuading investigation. Enrich reminds us that current libel laws require proof that a defending party had "actually malicious" intent, a requirement that dates only to a Supreme Court ruling in 1964; in Britain the standard of proof is much lower, which explains why so much "libel tourism" takes place there, even asNew York Times v. Sullivan provided a bulwark protecting the press. As recently as 2010, Congress unanimously passed a law "celebrating the country's commitment to defending Americans from weaponized libel claims." But then came a "freshening stream," as Bork put it, of claims funded by wealthy right-wing sponsors that, in one notable instance, crushed the anti-establishment Gawker website. That stream is quickening with the resurgence of Donald Trump, who has promised to alter libel laws "so when they [i.e., journalists] write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money." A revealing look at a campaign intended to stifle the First Amendment in favor of those in power.

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Starred review from February 1, 2025
With the rise of an archconservative political and judicial class, long-held legal rulings are under severe scrutiny, none more so than the landmark case of New York Times v. Sullivan that protects free speech in the press. In 2016, then-candidate Trump vowed to strengthen the country's libel laws, a position that was soon championed by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Trump's second administration is doubling down on that rhetoric. Enrich, the business investigations editor for the New York Times, elucidates the complex legal challenges to fact-based journalism brought against long-established media and independent outlets by hungrily litigious politicians and corporate executives. Allegedly aggrieved parties' clarion call of "defamation" becomes the J'accuse! of our times, with the goal of silencing the press pursued everywhere from rural school boards to mahogany-paneled corporate suites. The establishment of a free press is foundational to America, yet the onslaught of lawsuits that challenge bedrock notions of accuracy and intent portends a tactics of judicial interpretations designed to strip the media of its ability to function. With thousands of publications now defunct, Enrich's probing analysis brings crucial attention to this endangered tenet of a functioning democracy.

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