Legal 'Extensive Research' Precludes Finding of Actual Malice

The high court in Texas had held that a "biased" news story is not evidence of actual malice, especially when the reporters and producers submitted affidavits showing the extensive research they did. In the case involving a television documentary, the court ruled that the filmmaker’s decision to focus on divorce from the women’s perspective is not evidence of actual malice. "Mere evidence of pressure to produce stories from a particular point of view, even when they are hard-hitting or sensationalistic, is no evidence of actual malice," the court said.      The holding reaffirms the principle that a news report can be told with bias and yet not create liability for libel. This Texas court ruling is not precedent in our courts, but could be very persuasive because it is well written and relies on libel cases throughout the nation.      Forty seminar attendees debated the nature of actual malice and the impact of "bias" at the June 29 MDDC newsroom workshop and might want to clip this column and add it to their workshop notebooks.      The case in Texas is call Huckabee v. Time Warner Entertainment Co., and it was decided on May 4 by the Supreme Court of Texas.      The plaintiff is Judge Charles D. Huckabee, who was the presiding judge of a Texas court with jurisdiction over family law matters.      The defendant is HBO, which produced a one hour documentary titled "Women on Trial," focusing on four custody cases in Texas awarding custody of children to their fathers, after their mothers had accused the fathers of child abuse.      Judge Huckabee presided over two of the cases that HBO discussed and he sued for defamation based on the claim that he was portrayed as a judge who disregarded the children’s best interests.      Among other things, HBO responded with affidavits from the people who put the story together, demonstrating extensive research. For example, in just one of the cases before Judge Huckabee, HBO established that they had: · read the transcript of the hearing before Judge Huckabee; · interviewed the lawyers representing the child’s mother; · viewed three videotapes of interviews with and testimony from the child; · reviewed articles in the Houston press regarding the child’s case; · recited the reasons why the researcher doubted the expert’s conclusions.       Best of all, the researcher attached her own notes from the expert’s interview indicating that she doubted his conclusions even as she was doing the interview. HBO had also interviewed Judge Huckabee.       In fact, Judge Huckabee cited that interview as evidence of HBO’s actual malice because he explained all of the reasons why he had given custody of that particular child to his father. But the Texas high court disagreed with this argument.      The court said that just because the judge could offer "an explanation for his decision,. . . is not evidence that the filmmakers or HBO either believed it or had reason to doubt the truth of their broadcast. Denials by public figures to media charges are part and parcel of free discussion about public affairs. The mere fact that a defamation defendant knows that the public figure has denied harmful allegations or offered an alternative explanation of events is not evidence that the defendant doubted the allegations. As the United States Supreme Court has noted, ‘such denials are so commonplace in the world of polemical charge and countercharge that, in themselves, they hardly alert the conscientious reporter to the likelihood of error.’"       Judge Huckabee also argued that HBO omitted critical facts that would have led a viewer to reach a different conclusion about his ruling. But the Texas court said that "HBO’s failure to capture accurately all the story’s details suggests an error in judgment, which is no evidence of actual malice."      Here’s the reassuring conclusion: News copy does not have to be "politically correct," fair, unbiased, or balanced, though your shop may choose that as an ultimate goal. If the "leg work," hard work and extensive research supports a point of view, a bias, criticism, or accusations against the subject or subjects of your story, that story can be published without creating liability for libel.