Tallahasee – A state Senate committee gave a proposal on Wednesday that would change the state's defamation laws, with the critics of the measure, which it described for unconstitutional, vague and “counterproductive”.
The proposal, sponsored by Senator Corey Simon, R-Tallahasee, should request newspapers and broadcasting stations to remove false and defamatory articles and programs from their websites after they have received the termination that the stories are not true.
The draft law approved by the Justice Committee of the Senate (SB 752) is rooted in reporting on a man from Miami, who was arrested after being accused of harassing a child at a pool party. The public prosecutor later dropped an indictment against the man, who received damages from a jury after submitting a defamation against relatives of the child.
Barry Richard, a lawyer who represents the man, told the committee that two out of three television channels dismantled stories from their websites, who was dressed in an orange overall in an orange overall during a first course in 2017. According to Richard, the third stop had a policy not to remove stories from its website from his website.
Experience has ruined the man's life, said Richard. Imagination interviews were canceled that his wife and children left the country and his children were asked to leave the private school they attended, said Richard.
“That shouldn't happen,” Richard, a prominent lawyer at Tallahassee, who had previously represented the Florida Press Association for two decades, told the Senate Board.
“The media receives a privilege that none of us have,” argued Richard and added that material can “stay up” on the websites of news agencies. “How does that make sense? Why should you be able to maintain it forever and know that it is wrong? It just makes no sense and can destroy people's lives. “
But Sam Morley, General Counsel of Florida Press Association, said that a better approach is that publish stories update to include corrections in original articles.
“In this way, the public has access to both correction and the history instead of enforcing the history of history from the Internet,” said Morley.
The proposal focuses on the so -called “Fair Reporting Privileg”, which protects the media from defamation if they publish precise reports on information or data contained in official documents or statements.
Simon's legislation would eliminate the protection against defamation for media contracts if they were informed that a declaration published on the Internet was determined as wrong in a judicial procedure, or if they “received a announcement of facts that would cause a reasonable person to have such a statement wrong” and did not remove history “from a website” control.
Lawyers for media said that part of the invoice is too vague.
“Which specific facts would be considered sufficient to meet this reasonable test? How would the publisher know what is reasonable, what not? You would probably have to be wrong on the side of the information if the story is largely precise, ”said Morley.
James Lake, a lawyer who practices the defamation law, informed the committee that the measure would lead to entire items being remedied “if a judgment is controversial”.
“This is not just excessive, unconstitutional, it is counterproductive, because in the situation in which events have changed a story, perhaps with an acquittal, the person who is the subject of this story would benefit from a correction or an update that is published,” said Lake.
Lake, who told the Senate committee that he was a Republican, warned that the draft law was to contain the recent efforts to contain the recent efforts by the recent efforts by the GOP.
“This is used to punish conservative speech,” he said.
Senator Tom Leek, R-Armond Beach, praised the law and said that changes in the state's defamation standards were overdue. He pointed out a change in the law on Wednesday in order to limit the commitment of the media, to remove contributions to websites that they control. An original version of the invoice would have removed the protection of privileges if stories can remain on the Internet, which Lauch described as a “important distinction”.
“The media outlet has no control over the Internet, which is why this calculation is limited to doing it about things that control it, namely the website. It creates a positive duty to put it down, but only if you know that it is wrong and wrong, and that's the right thing, ”said Leek.
Sen. Rosalind Osgood, D-Fort Lauderdale, also supported the measure.
“People often think as elected civil servants that they can only say what they want to say … and they are dragging and nothing against it is done. And it hurts your children, it hurts your call, ”she said. “I think we have to start doing something against the defamation and the direct lies. We have to be freedom of speaking, but it has to be with integrity. “
But Sen. Tina Polsky, D-Boca Raton, said the bill goes too far.
The circumstances in which Richard's client was involved were “ugly and unhappy,” said Polsky, a lawyer.
“It does not take the fact that it happened, and that's exactly what news is,” said Polsky, who was one of two committee members who voted against the measure. “I think it's just chunky and it doesn't make much sense, and there is so much attack on (now) media because of our president because of our governor. There are complaints that are left against very valid news organizations and on the right, and this will only be fed into this madness. “
However, Simon said that people like the Miami man can be permanently stigmatized for something that they have not done.
“I think our media should be held a standard that, if we misunderstand it, most of them should say that they misunderstood it,” said Simon. “Unfortunately, this didn't happen here. You would not even print the withdrawal that you misunderstood it. They have just left the story and it has created this stigma with which this person has to do for a lifetime. “
