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This is probably an unpopular opinion, and I'd want to think this through more, but I've been feeling recently that libel laws in the U.S. ought to be stronger.

This is probably an unpopular opinion, and I'd want to think this through more, but I've been feeling recently that libel laws in the U.S. ought to be stronger. We have a massive problem with propagandists (especially on the right, but also the left) using blatant lies to manipulate opinion. The net result is a huge amount of anger & distrust. The media is a mess. Even mainstream outlets like Fox routinely lie to their viewers. Other countries with stronger libel laws (like the UK) don't have nearly as bad a problem, and I can't help but feel like it's related. Obviously the UK has its own issues but it feels much saner to me. In this case, accusing a specific police officer of being corrupt with zero evidence IS an awful thing to do. It's different from saying that a department is corrupt, etc. There are tons of examples of police abusing their power but this just doesn't seem like one. Note that the standard for criminal libel requires the person to know they are lying, and that has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

deleted 8y ago
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analyst74 8y ago
There is also massive corruption problem in the police force, because citizens don't really have effective ways to "watch the watchers". And stronger libel law will definitely be used against people who criticize the police, rightly or wrongly. That being said, misinformation is also a huge problem. So maybe we'll have to find other ways to more effectively hold individuals accountable, whether they're abusing institutional power or spreading misinformation.
- umvi 8y ago
  > There is also massive corruption problem in the police force Is this really true or just the impression given by cherry-picking the worst possible cases nation wide and amplifying them via media? Define "massive". If you got pulled over, would you be legitimately worried about being tazed or abused?
  - Ar-Curunir 8y ago
    If you're the wrong colour, yes.
  - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
    I'd be more likely to believe that the publicly-repeated abuse cases are flukes if the officers involved didn't seem to get off with a slap on the wrist the majority of the time.
  - HedgeSparrow 8y ago
    Ah, so you're asking what race analyst74 is.
- j-c-hewitt 8y ago
  There's a difference between stating an opinion ("The Exeter police are corrupt") and making a statement like "Police Chief John Doe took a bribe to overlook a crime." You can write an op-ed insinuating that based on your sources, the corruption at the Exeter Police Department goes to the top. It's something else to defame an individual specifically. For example, it's defamation to say "analyst74 raped and murdered a girl in 1993" unless I have at the minimum a good faith belief that that was the case. To reiterate, it'd be protected speech to say like you just said that "corruption is a massive problem in American police forces." It's not so much protected speech if you accuse Officer John Doe of specific criminal acts in public if the statement isn't true. For other reasons, this is not the best defendant just from a character perspective the ACLU could pick for this kind of situation (https://www.seacoastonline.com/news/20180531/exeter-man-charged-with-defaming-police-chief https://www.seacoastonline.com/news/20180531/exeter-man-char...). To actually challenge the law, they'd have to somehow reframe what he said as an opinion. Obviously the cops aren't going to bring charges for the vast majority of these kinds of instances, but they did against Frese because he's a felon with a history of harassing the local police. And not a cute and cuddly felon either: he ran over a traffic worker after threatening to run him over. It's fine for the ACLU to take this as a test case but this is not this sort of situation that is a great test case.
- stevenwoo 8y ago
  I think there's a difference between corruption and unaccountability. Due to the way the justice system is set up in the USA plus the history of using police forces to subdue to population prosecutors have generally little to gain/incentive/motivation to prosecute law enforcement even in the most infamous cases.
darkpuma 8y ago
If the UK's notion of libel were applied to the scenario of the article, Robert Frese would be required to prove that his statements were truthful, rather than the police/prosecution proving Robert knew he was lying. That's obscene. Think about how hard each of those would be to prove. To prove he knew he was lying would almost require that he admitted it in writing or was recorded admitting it. But for a man like Robert Frese to prove that the police were dirty would be almost impossible, the FBI often has difficulty proving that crooked cops are crooked, and they have a lot more resources than just some guy who trash-talked the police. Requiring Robert Frese to prove himself correct is totally unreasonable. Requiring the prosecution to prove Robert Frese knew he was lying is the only semi-sane approach to criminal libel (the criminality of libel is dubious in the first place.) If you want stronger libel laws to hold corporations accountable, you need to first stop treating corporations and individuals as the same. Applying the same standard to both will create a situation where either corporations are relatively free to say anything, or create a situation where individuals are crushed under the force of laws designed to be forceful enough to beat corporations into compliance. But until that separation happens, having laws that protect people like Robert Frese is the sane default.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >If the UK's notion of libel were applied to the scenario of the article, Robert Frese would be required to prove that his statements were truthful, rather than the police/prosecution proving Robert knew he was lying. That's obscene. Is it? If he can't prove his statements were true (eg. if he doesn't have hard facts baking him), then why was he making them? That said, often those things (dirty police, dirty corporations, etc) are right there obvious to most, and you can't prove them because of course they're careful -- e.g. they might even admit it to your face, but never on record.
  - darkpuma 8y ago
    Yes, that's obscene. It should be legal for private citizens to call a cop dirty without first launching a huge FBI investigation into the police department to prove it. Often times those FBI investigations only take place because private citizens bring federal attention to the local situation by calling cops dirty loudly and often.
coldtea 8y ago
>The media is a mess. Even mainstream outlets like Fox routinely lie to their viewers. Other countries with stronger libel laws (like the UK) don't have nearly as bad a problem Ever read the Daily Mail, the SUN and co? (Or for that matter the Guardian, for left-sided BS).
- digianarchist 8y ago
  Did you just throw the Guardian in the same list as some of Britain's worst tabloids? The Morning Star would have been a better example...
  - yakshaving_jgt 8y ago
    Sorry, but The Guardian is garbage. It’s not as obviously garbage as the DM et al, but they publish Laurie Penny. That’s pretty bad.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >Did you just throw the Guardian in the same list as some of Britain's worst tabloids? Yeah, it's just as much as a tabloid, only for a different market group who considers themselves more refined. Nothing actually high brow there...
rockinghigh 8y ago
Most lies on Fox News or spread in the UK before Brexit would not qualify as libel or defamation. Misleading numbers about immigration, border crossings or crimes committed by foreigners are not directed at one particular person and would not be considered defamation/libel.
skywhopper 8y ago
I believe the UK has much stricter laws in this regard, but it seems to face a lot of the same problems as the US. Besides, a lot of the truly dangerous misinformation is coming from antagonistic foreign governments, which probably can't be bullied out of doing so over the Internet by mere local criminal laws. Not to mention that there's plenty of ways to satisfy libel laws and still spread misinformation. I'm not sure what the solution is, but I don't think it's giving the government the ability to target people for things they say. That'd be a great tool to use to harass political opponents.
roenxi 8y ago
I have more objections to that than I am going to fit into a single comment, so I'll try to summarise the top few: 1) The incentive structures around libel laws are horrible. If you give the US Congress moral and constitutional authority to pass something like what the UK has they will make it very hard to criticise US politicians. 2) "especially on the right, but also the left" is wrong. All media organisations are routinely wrong on all issues - there was an anecdotal named law for this but I've forgotten the name of it, where if the media reports on something that the viewer understands it is obvious all the reporting is wrong, but then the viewer assumes that reporting on subjects they know nothing about is correct. One subgroup can't be more wrong when all of the group is basically all wrong - there is news that is wrong the way the consensus is wrong and then there is news that is wrong in radical new ways. 3) I don't have any examples of abuses of the UK system because the abuses would be suppressed under the libel laws. That is not a sane state of play to assess the merits of libel laws. The US system of messy, public opposition is much better than hiding all the conflict behind a veneer of civility - conflict does not disappear because people don't talk about it publicly.
- basilgohar 8y ago
  >2) "especially on the right, but also the left" is wrong. All media organisations are routinely wrong on all issues - there was an anecdotal named law for this but I've forgotten the name of it, where if the media reports on something that the viewer understands it is obvious all the reporting is wrong, but then the viewer assumes that reporting on subjects they know nothing about is correct. One subgroup can't be more wrong when all of the group is basically all wrong - there is news that is wrong the way the consensus is wrong and then there is news that is wrong in radical new ways. What you are referring to here I believe is the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect [0] cited by Michael Crichton. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect
  - davvolun 8y ago
    Wow, thanks for linking to that. Note that the "Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect" is a discussion point by a popular novelist, not a well-researched psychological concept. Frankly, without deeper research into the concept, it's a quote from an famous person.
briandear 8y ago
The problem with libel and slander laws is that you have to prove damages. Without an “injury” there is no case. They’re civil torts.
yholio 8y ago
> In this case, accusing a specific police officer of being corrupt with zero evidence IS an awful thing to do. I strongly disagree. A policeman is a representative of the state, he chose that job freely and he is getting paid for it, he can have personal insurance and legal support paid by the taxpayer. If libel is a routine professional hazard for policemen, they can request a raise and we as a society will pay more to hire such men, just as we pay more to hire people willing to risk their lives in the line. A citizen on the other hand, has no such liberties and is paying for the whole show. The least he can do, when he feels he's being wronged, is to call out those who are responsible. I agree they should be liable for libel damages and I understand that might not deter some poor people. But the idea that libel from homeless people against government officials is an awful affliction that must be stopped with criminal punishments - that must be rejected wholeheartedly. > Note that the standard for criminal libel requires the person to know they are lying, and that has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. The article notes that is very little stopping a policeman to abuse a person while that criminal liability lingers. He can easily make that person spend a few nights in jail, can coerce them into self-incrimination and can even get a conviction out of lower status individuals with little power to defend themselves. Nothing good can come out of jailing people that criticize public officials.
openasocket 8y ago
Since you cite the UK law, it should be noted that (at least I'm pretty sure) the UK no longer has criminal libel laws. I'd be OK with the police suing him for defamation, but he should not serve jail time.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

analyst74 8y ago

There is also massive corruption problem in the police force, because citizens don't really have effective ways to "watch the watchers". And stronger libel law will definitely be used against people who criticize the police, rightly or wrongly. That being said, misinformation is also a huge problem. So maybe we'll have to find other ways to more effectively hold individuals accountable, whether they're abusing institutional power or spreading misinformation.

umvi 8y ago
> There is also massive corruption problem in the police force Is this really true or just the impression given by cherry-picking the worst possible cases nation wide and amplifying them via media? Define "massive". If you got pulled over, would you be legitimately worried about being tazed or abused?
- Ar-Curunir 8y ago
  If you're the wrong colour, yes.
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  I'd be more likely to believe that the publicly-repeated abuse cases are flukes if the officers involved didn't seem to get off with a slap on the wrist the majority of the time.
- HedgeSparrow 8y ago
  Ah, so you're asking what race analyst74 is.
j-c-hewitt 8y ago
There's a difference between stating an opinion ("The Exeter police are corrupt") and making a statement like "Police Chief John Doe took a bribe to overlook a crime." You can write an op-ed insinuating that based on your sources, the corruption at the Exeter Police Department goes to the top. It's something else to defame an individual specifically. For example, it's defamation to say "analyst74 raped and murdered a girl in 1993" unless I have at the minimum a good faith belief that that was the case. To reiterate, it'd be protected speech to say like you just said that "corruption is a massive problem in American police forces." It's not so much protected speech if you accuse Officer John Doe of specific criminal acts in public if the statement isn't true. For other reasons, this is not the best defendant just from a character perspective the ACLU could pick for this kind of situation (https://www.seacoastonline.com/news/20180531/exeter-man-charged-with-defaming-police-chief https://www.seacoastonline.com/news/20180531/exeter-man-char...). To actually challenge the law, they'd have to somehow reframe what he said as an opinion. Obviously the cops aren't going to bring charges for the vast majority of these kinds of instances, but they did against Frese because he's a felon with a history of harassing the local police. And not a cute and cuddly felon either: he ran over a traffic worker after threatening to run him over. It's fine for the ACLU to take this as a test case but this is not this sort of situation that is a great test case.
stevenwoo 8y ago
I think there's a difference between corruption and unaccountability. Due to the way the justice system is set up in the USA plus the history of using police forces to subdue to population prosecutors have generally little to gain/incentive/motivation to prosecute law enforcement even in the most infamous cases.

darkpuma 8y ago

If the UK's notion of libel were applied to the scenario of the article, Robert Frese would be required to prove that his statements were truthful, rather than the police/prosecution proving Robert knew he was lying. That's obscene. Think about how hard each of those would be to prove. To prove he knew he was lying would almost require that he admitted it in writing or was recorded admitting it. But for a man like Robert Frese to prove that the police were dirty would be almost impossible, the FBI often has difficulty proving that crooked cops are crooked, and they have a lot more resources than just some guy who trash-talked the police. Requiring Robert Frese to prove himself correct is totally unreasonable. Requiring the prosecution to prove Robert Frese knew he was lying is the only semi-sane approach to criminal libel (the criminality of libel is dubious in the first place.) If you want stronger libel laws to hold corporations accountable, you need to first stop treating corporations and individuals as the same. Applying the same standard to both will create a situation where either corporations are relatively free to say anything, or create a situation where individuals are crushed under the force of laws designed to be forceful enough to beat corporations into compliance. But until that separation happens, having laws that protect people like Robert Frese is the sane default.

coldtea 8y ago
>If the UK's notion of libel were applied to the scenario of the article, Robert Frese would be required to prove that his statements were truthful, rather than the police/prosecution proving Robert knew he was lying. That's obscene. Is it? If he can't prove his statements were true (eg. if he doesn't have hard facts baking him), then why was he making them? That said, often those things (dirty police, dirty corporations, etc) are right there obvious to most, and you can't prove them because of course they're careful -- e.g. they might even admit it to your face, but never on record.
- darkpuma 8y ago
  Yes, that's obscene. It should be legal for private citizens to call a cop dirty without first launching a huge FBI investigation into the police department to prove it. Often times those FBI investigations only take place because private citizens bring federal attention to the local situation by calling cops dirty loudly and often.

coldtea 8y ago

>The media is a mess. Even mainstream outlets like Fox routinely lie to their viewers. Other countries with stronger libel laws (like the UK) don't have nearly as bad a problem Ever read the Daily Mail, the SUN and co? (Or for that matter the Guardian, for left-sided BS).

digianarchist 8y ago
Did you just throw the Guardian in the same list as some of Britain's worst tabloids? The Morning Star would have been a better example...
- yakshaving_jgt 8y ago
  Sorry, but The Guardian is garbage. It’s not as obviously garbage as the DM et al, but they publish Laurie Penny. That’s pretty bad.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >Did you just throw the Guardian in the same list as some of Britain's worst tabloids? Yeah, it's just as much as a tabloid, only for a different market group who considers themselves more refined. Nothing actually high brow there...

rockinghigh 8y ago

Most lies on Fox News or spread in the UK before Brexit would not qualify as libel or defamation. Misleading numbers about immigration, border crossings or crimes committed by foreigners are not directed at one particular person and would not be considered defamation/libel.

skywhopper 8y ago

I believe the UK has much stricter laws in this regard, but it seems to face a lot of the same problems as the US. Besides, a lot of the truly dangerous misinformation is coming from antagonistic foreign governments, which probably can't be bullied out of doing so over the Internet by mere local criminal laws. Not to mention that there's plenty of ways to satisfy libel laws and still spread misinformation. I'm not sure what the solution is, but I don't think it's giving the government the ability to target people for things they say. That'd be a great tool to use to harass political opponents.

roenxi 8y ago

I have more objections to that than I am going to fit into a single comment, so I'll try to summarise the top few: 1) The incentive structures around libel laws are horrible. If you give the US Congress moral and constitutional authority to pass something like what the UK has they will make it very hard to criticise US politicians. 2) "especially on the right, but also the left" is wrong. All media organisations are routinely wrong on all issues - there was an anecdotal named law for this but I've forgotten the name of it, where if the media reports on something that the viewer understands it is obvious all the reporting is wrong, but then the viewer assumes that reporting on subjects they know nothing about is correct. One subgroup can't be more wrong when all of the group is basically all wrong - there is news that is wrong the way the consensus is wrong and then there is news that is wrong in radical new ways. 3) I don't have any examples of abuses of the UK system because the abuses would be suppressed under the libel laws. That is not a sane state of play to assess the merits of libel laws. The US system of messy, public opposition is much better than hiding all the conflict behind a veneer of civility - conflict does not disappear because people don't talk about it publicly.

basilgohar 8y ago
>2) "especially on the right, but also the left" is wrong. All media organisations are routinely wrong on all issues - there was an anecdotal named law for this but I've forgotten the name of it, where if the media reports on something that the viewer understands it is obvious all the reporting is wrong, but then the viewer assumes that reporting on subjects they know nothing about is correct. One subgroup can't be more wrong when all of the group is basically all wrong - there is news that is wrong the way the consensus is wrong and then there is news that is wrong in radical new ways. What you are referring to here I believe is the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect [0] cited by Michael Crichton. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect
- davvolun 8y ago
  Wow, thanks for linking to that. Note that the "Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect" is a discussion point by a popular novelist, not a well-researched psychological concept. Frankly, without deeper research into the concept, it's a quote from an famous person.

briandear 8y ago

The problem with libel and slander laws is that you have to prove damages. Without an “injury” there is no case. They’re civil torts.

yholio 8y ago

> In this case, accusing a specific police officer of being corrupt with zero evidence IS an awful thing to do. I strongly disagree. A policeman is a representative of the state, he chose that job freely and he is getting paid for it, he can have personal insurance and legal support paid by the taxpayer. If libel is a routine professional hazard for policemen, they can request a raise and we as a society will pay more to hire such men, just as we pay more to hire people willing to risk their lives in the line. A citizen on the other hand, has no such liberties and is paying for the whole show. The least he can do, when he feels he's being wronged, is to call out those who are responsible. I agree they should be liable for libel damages and I understand that might not deter some poor people. But the idea that libel from homeless people against government officials is an awful affliction that must be stopped with criminal punishments - that must be rejected wholeheartedly. > Note that the standard for criminal libel requires the person to know they are lying, and that has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. The article notes that is very little stopping a policeman to abuse a person while that criminal liability lingers. He can easily make that person spend a few nights in jail, can coerce them into self-incrimination and can even get a conviction out of lower status individuals with little power to defend themselves. Nothing good can come out of jailing people that criticize public officials.

openasocket 8y ago

Since you cite the UK law, it should be noted that (at least I'm pretty sure) the UK no longer has criminal libel laws. I'd be OK with the police suing him for defamation, but he should not serve jail time.