Irony evidently not one of his stronger suits, Freedom Watch chief Larry Klayman has joined with Joe Arpaio in a defamation suit against CNN, the Huffington Post, and Rolling Stone magazine. The two men claim more than $300 million in defamation damages.
Arpaio and Klayman will lose. And rightly so.
The lawsuit “alleges that these ‘Fake News’ publications libeled former Maricopa Sheriff and U.S. Senate candidate Joe Arpaio by falsely branding him a ‘felon.'” This is not true, they say, because Arpaio was never found guilty as a felony.
While it is true that Arpaio is not a convicted felon, the media contentions are not otherwise defamatory. That’s because Arpaio is a public figure and is thus subject to the defamation parameters appropriate to that public station. Those parameters were defined in the Supreme Court case of New York Times v. Sullivan, which ruled that speech involving public figures is only defamatory if made with the “actual malice” of spite or a reckless disregard for the truth. The court’s judgment here was designed to discourage litigation against the media that is designed to block publication of matters of public import.
The offense of actual malice is patently not apparent in the Klayman-Arpaio lawsuit. While media outlets should have shown more regard for the facts in their descriptions of Arpaio, Arpaio’s legal struggles with the Justice Department and his conviction on a misdemeanor charge absolve the media of defamatory culpability. Put simply, Arpaio’s legal quandary was defined by his own conduct, not the media. The media’s reporting was wrong, but not so wrong as to be ruled malicious by the courts.
This is how it should be. America is a country made great by its tradition of expansive free speech. And just as Sarah Palin has learned, Joe Arpaio and Larry Klayman will also soon learn that they cannot bankrupt media outlets without grand and sufficient legal cause. The media mistakes in this case are regrettable, but they are not evidence of defamation.
