What do you mean TMZ can’t be sued??????

“To the press alone, checkered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.” - James Madison

The Supreme Court has ruled in the past that there are only certain instances where the right to freedom of the Press is revoked in order to protect the greater good. The first instance is actual malice—libel cases. Can someone say whatever they want about someone and get away with it—the court believes that this is almost a free statement.

The Supreme Court takes the First Amendment very seriously. Since they have complete control over their own docket, it always seems as though they are particularly inclined to take cases that involve First Amendment Rights. I believe it’s because these cases make such an impact—who doesn’t want to make an impact on history. All this aside, in the cases of Near v. MN and New York Times v. Sullivan, the court faced instances of the media publishing defamatory comments about specific individuals. Both times that the court ruled that prior restraint cannot be implemented because actual malice must occur with no prior knowledge that the information published is false. They also ruled in Near v. MN, that politicians and public figured are held to a higher standard of libel. Proving libel is extremely hard to do--- try convincing a judge or jury of what someone else thought or knew prior to publication. It’s cases like these that allow companies like TMZ to exist. You don’t think that some of the celebrities would love to sue TMZ for something they have said about them. If you pay close attention to what the people on TMZ say (Yes, even the long haired stoner guy) they always say that the person “appears” to be doing something , or “seems” to be doing this. That’s because of the threat of libel, if they say that they “appear to be doing something” then they are not showing actual malice. Tricky but all apart of Freedom of the Press and libel.

The next and only exception to freedom of the press is national security. This makes sense seeing that the media can’t publish any information that would be damaging to our country. Could you imagine the uproar is the NYT published an article telling in detail when and where some of our secret ops soldiers were going to be, ummmm not cool. The key word in this exception is damaging, not embarrassing. The Court faced this type of question in New York Times Co. v. United States. In 1971, some classified documents called the Pentagon Papers fell into the hands of the NYT and they planned on publishing them. These papers would undoubtedly embarrass the national government and Richard Nixon sued for prior restraint. The court ruled that the Government had not met that burden, so the prior restraint was not justified. So embarrassment does not count as danger, the big man goes down and NYT wins.


In the end, these cases have taught us a valuable lesson. Don’t piss off the media because it would be very hard to stop them from coming after you; key word being hard, not impossible. There are still protections from the media (libel and national security) the only problem is the difficulty receiving those protections.