Jay Seaton, the editor of the Grand Junction, Colo., Sentinel, threatened to sue a Republican state legislator who called his newspaper “fake news.”
The story was treated as a joke. And it should have remained a joke. But today Poynter has published an interview with Seaton, who seems very convinced of the rightness of his cause. He evinces a very warped idea of First Amendment when he suggests that it is somehow weakened when journalists are criticized by the people they cover.
I take the burden, imposed by the First Amendment, on a free press pretty seriously. Because the success of this democracy is due in large part to two players: our judicial system and the free press. An attack on either of them is pretty jeopardizing to our Constitution. So I am responding to that kind of attack on a free press in one of the ways that I am familiar with which is judicial remedies.
This could not be more wrong or self-defeating.
Attacks on the free press are part of the freedom of speech. So are attacks against the judiciary. Remember when President Barack Obama attacked the judiciary (getting the facts wrong in the process) during one of his State of the Union addresses? I do. And I don’t think Justice Alito, whom Obama arguably defamed by mischaracterizing his court opinion, would have any grounds suing the president out of some feigned concern for a mistaken view of judicial integrity. Nor do I believe that Senate Democrats, who have grossly mischaracterized most of Judge Neil Gorsuch’s jurisprudence, at times in venues outside the protection of legislative immunity, should have to worry for one moment that what they say might end them up in court.
If anyone is jeopardizing the Constitution, it’s the newspaper editor who thinks Americans should live in fear of criticizing their local fishwrap, lest they end up on the business end of a frivolous lawsuit. One reason so many journalists opposed and were wary of President Trump — including conservative journalists — was that he threatened to make it easier to sue journalists for libel. Seaton appears to share this goal, even if he won’t say it out loud, because his plans would necessarily widen the scope of such lawsuits — including lawsuits against publications that talk about the issue of “fake news.”
Seaton is right that most attacks on newspapers and television news networks as “fake news” are factually inappropriate. Very few journalists make things up on purpose, and those caught doing it are typically fired on the spot. But that doesn’t mean editors should run around suing people for impugning their accuracy with phrases like “fake news.” What’s the goal here? To create new libel precedents that will actually make the press less free in the future?
These concerns are mooted, however, by that fact that this lawsuit, were it ever brought, would probably not survive a motion to dismiss. Even so, I’m old enough to remember being taught in journalism school that one should never write about lawsuits until and unless they’re actually filed, because so often the threat of a lawsuit is merely a means of gaining publicity or sympathy.
That’s clearly the case here. So at the risk of being sued by a litigious editor, I hereby label this entire story “fake news” and leave it at that.
