DOW JONES VERSUS FREE SPEECH

I posted yesterday about the court case for defamation between Dow Jones and Joe Gutnick. Randall Parker emailed me the following comment in response:


I disagree. I'm a hard core 1st amendment guy who thinks the most treasonous US president was John Adams when he signed into law the Sedition Act and prosecutors started locking up Jeffersonian (or were they Whig?) newspaper editors. I think one of the biggest advantages of the US system is the greater protection for speech. Someone like Gutnick can easily reach the public to provide his version of the story. That is more true today than it was in the past. The public then can judge.

The disadvantage of the ease of suing for slander is that often times one side has a monopoly on knowledge and only by tossing around rumours that might bring forth people who can fill in the details can the truth emerge.



Some thoughts in reply:

My main point was that it is Dow Jones that has let us all down with its egregious insults and its refusal to do the decent thing and apologize. If they had been half way decent none of this would have arisen. Judges are only human and I think our High Court could well have been moved in its decision by the gravity of the slander and a wish to protect Australian citizens from future such outrageous attacks.

And while Gutnick may be able to afford advertisements etc. in an attempt to clear his name, that is going to be a much less satisfactory corrective than getting a retraction from the original slanderer. And for the great mass of us who cannot afford even advertisements, getting newspapers to be more responsible in the first place is a signal service that Gutnick has probably done for us.

But I see Randall�s final point and I am inclined to agree that newspapers should indeed be free to report rumours -- but they should report them as rumours not as facts. What was said of Gutnick was not a rumour -- it was a gross, direct and slanderous insult that anybody would be most grieved to hear of themselves. I certainly would be. I would not be able to defend myself so I am glad Gutnick did.

But, in any case, our High Court is the equivalent of the US Supreme Court so the deed is done now. It is a precedent that is most unlikely ever to be overturned. And it is a precedent that should have considerable influence in other common-law countries such as Britain.

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GREENIE LIES ABOUT OIL SPILLS

The recent oil-tanker sinking off the coast of Spain was undoubtedly a disaster but only part of the oil escaped into the ocean at the time of the sinking. Most remained in the ship. The Greenies really like that, however. They claim that all the oil must escape someday and hence will wreak damage for years to come. That is utter nonsense. The claim that the oil that has gone down with the ship is any problem is a total lie. One of my correspondents explains why here.

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CANADA COMES GOOD

After all the bad thoughts that I and many others (including many Canadians) have been having about Canada lately, they go and surprise us and go to some lengths to co-operate in the fight against terrorism. Let's hope that they keep it up. Excerpt:

"The United States and Canada announced today a broadening of their military cooperation to include the possibility that troops of one country would cross into the other in case of a terrorist attack or natural disaster�

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ELITES VERSUS THE PEOPLE ON IMMIGRATION

I hear that some survey results are due to be released in the United States shortly that show a huge gap between �opinion leaders� and Joe Public on the issue of immigration. It is the same here in Australia. All the wiseheads are saying how terrible it is that we lock up illegal immigrants from the Middle-East but the public are behind the policy by a huge majority. So strong is the public support for the policy that even our major Leftist party felt obliged to support it at the recent Federal election -- which is still causing much weeping and wailing and garnishing of teeth among the Leftie hardliners in the party.

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GOOD QUOTE

From The Fed:

"A liberal is a man who will give away everything he doesn't own." -- Frank Dane

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PAID MATERNITY LEAVE

Welfare payments can be a very corrupting and unfair influence but I think this proposal has a better case than most. With sub-replacement birthrates now the rule in most of the developed world, incentives for women to have children do make sense in many ways.

So the Zero Population Growth movement of the 70s is an example of how laughable Greenie scares tend to be in the long term. When the Greenies were all trying to scare us with Paul Ehrlich�s �Population bomb� -- and its claim that the population was growing so fast that catastrophe was imminent -- I am pleased to say that I was even then ridiculing the whole idea (Ray, 1974)

Reference:
Ray, J.J. (1974) Conservatism as heresy. Sydney: ANZ Book Co.

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