IP: DO READ When the San Jose Mercury News libels a guy ...

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

media.1187: When the San Jose Mercury News libels a guy ...
 
 To: David Yarnold
        Managing Editor
        San Jose Mercury News
        Fax: 408-298-1966
 
 Fr: Mike Godwin
        Staff Counsel, Electronic Frontier Foundation
 
 
 Mr. Yarnold,
 
 Your reporters, Howard Bryant and David Plotnikoff, have published false
 information about me and about my organization, and they have done so in a
 way that has damaged both my reputation and my credibility. As a
 journalist as well as a lawyer, I am astonished by the reckless disregard
 for basic journalistic procedure in the story, which appears in March
 3rd's edition of the San Jose Mercury News.
 
 To quote the AP Stylebook and Libel Manual (1990):
 "There is only one complete and unconditional defense to a civil action
 for libel: that the facts stated are PROVABLY TRUE. (Note well that word,
 PROVABLY.) Quoting someone correctly is not enough. The important thing is
 to be able to satisfy a jury that the libelous statement is substatially
 correct."
 
 Although the story is deeply inaccurate in countless respects, I shall
 confine myself to correcting only those false statements of fact that bear
 on me and my organization:
 
 Bryant and Plotnikoff write (with regard to the groups opposing
 the "decency" legislation):
 "Had the Internet community relinquished a no-law-at-all position, Taylor
 said, some compromise could have been reached."
 
 No one had ever taken a "no-law-at-all" position. EFF took the position
 that that existing laws already criminalized obscenity and child
 pornography on the Net, and that any new laws should be designed to plug
 whatever gaps there were in existing law. Hence our call for hearings, or
 for a study, neither of which occurred prior to passage of the
 Communications Decency Amendment. Neither Bryant nor Plotnikoff asked me
 to comment on this charge.
 
 Bryant and Plotnikoff write:
 "Example: In late February, Exon offered the first draft of his indecency
 bill to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of the key Internet
 community players, for critique and feedback. Sources say the EFF added
 five provisions that, in essence, would have gutted it by calling for a
 study and not providing for power to prosecute offenders."
 
 Same point as before. The power to prosecute offenders was clearly in the
 existing law. The question was whether it was appropriate to pass
 legislation that would make language that is perfectly legal in the San
 Jose Mercury News's print edition illegal if published in the online
 edition. Neither Bryant nor Plotnikoff asked me to comment on this charge.
 
 What's more, Senator Exon never "offered the first draft of his indecency
 bill" to EFF. Neither Bryant nor Plotnikoff asked me to comment on this
 charge.
 
 Bryant and Plotnikoff write:
 ''Exon was looking for input from both sides to forge something honest and
 reasonably constructed,'' Taylor said. ''Instead, EFF hoodwinked him. They
 lied to him, and for that reason, no one listened seriously to anything
 they said.''
 
 It is simply a false statement of fact that EFF or I ever "hoodwinked" or
 "lied to" Senator Exon. Neither Bryant nor Plotnikoff asked me to comment
 on this charge. I remind you that accusations of dishonesty are libelous
 per se.
 
 Bryant and Plotnikoff write:
 Later, the EFF ''would call everyone names,'' Taylor said. ''(EFF lawyer
 Mike) Godwin would call us Nazi censors if we didn't agree with him. Talk
 about a way to get doors slammed in your face.''
 
 I have never called anyone in this debate a "Nazi" or a "Nazi censor."
 Indeed, I'm on the record as being morally opposed to the use of such
 invidious comparisons. In an article published in Wired in 1994, I
 criticized online debates in which '[Nazi] comparisons trivialized the
 horror of the Holocaust and the social pathology of the Nazis.'" There is
 no clearer evidence that Bruce Taylor lied to your reporters than this
 quote. Neither Bryant nor Plotnikoff asked me to comment on this charge.
 
 I spent about an hour on the phone with David Plotnikoff as he researched
 this story. We spoke at great length about the success of the so-called
 "decency" lobby. It would have been trivial during that conversation for
 Plotnikoff to ask me about the specific statements made about me and about
 the Electronic Frontier Foundation. But neither Bryant nor Plotnikoff
 asked me to comment on the statements that Bruce Taylor made to your
 reporters.
 
 There are other inaccuracies in the story -- including the implication
 that "Enough is Enough!" is a "middle-of-the-road" pro-censorship group
 compared to the National Law Center for Children and Families. A tiny
 amount of research by your reporters would have revealed that the two
 organizations share an office suite in Fairfax, Virginia, (along with
 another religious-right pro-censorship group, the National Coalition for
 the Protection of Families and Children), and that they work together to
 promote the same agenda frequently.
 
 But had Bryant and Plotnikoff merely been "hoodwinked" by Bruce Taylor,
 that wouldn't have bothered me nearly so much. (The religious right
 misleads incompetent reporters all the time.) What bothers me immensely is
 that your newspaper blithely repeated false statements of fact about my
 organization and about me -- statements that damage my reputation by
 making me look incompetent, dishonest, and hypocritical.
 
 As someone who has long opposed the use of libel lawsuits to settle
 disputes of this sort (see my article on the subject in the current issue
 of Wired), I have to say that you may have made me turn the corner on
 libel law.
 
 At minimum, your reporters should publicly acknowledge that they did not
 interview me with regard to the specific statements made about me or about
 EFF by Bruce Taylor of the National Law Center for Families and Children.
 
 
 Mike Godwin
 Staff Counsel
 Electronic Frontier Foundation
 CA Bar Number: 178904