Lies & Exaggerations
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Is there a more unethical group of media than the so-called super-market tabloids? There may well be no other single publication that is involved in lawsuits for libel and slander than the National Enquirer. Among those who recently sued- and won- are Carol Burnett and Tom Cruise. Burnett, who donated her award to charity, sued the Enquirer for a story about her allegedly being drunk in public, while Cruise sued for a major story by a male porn star that he and Cruise had a romantic gay fling. In addition, Cruise is suing a small Los Angeles magazine. "It's doubted he needs the money, but for the second time in two months Tom Cruise has filed a $100 million lawsuit against someone suggesting that he's gay. This time it's Michael Davis, who publishes Bold, a Los Angeles magazine. Cruise claims Davis wrote a dozen news outlets saying he'd found a videotape capturing the star having sex with another manaFollowing a report by the French magazine, Actustar that Cruise had a fling with a gay male porn star (Cruise is suing the actor while still deciding whether to sue the magazine), Cruise is on a mission." (People 17) The fact is that libel and slander are difficult to prove, but celebrities are major targets. The reason is obvious: voracious readers who want to believe every little piece of "dirt" about big names gobble news about stars' activities up. Currently, the major concern of personalities is being "out-ed." That is, revelations of their sexual habits are
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and emotional distress for the way she was treated by The Boston Globe and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute following two chemotherapy overdoses in a medical experiment she designed and oversaw." (Dembner B 1) The jurors found that the paper had violated the doctor's privacy by disclosing details of the experiment and investigation into the overdoses. Perhaps one of the reasons for the paper's rush to judgment was that the patient who died was a health columnist for the newspaper.
There is another element now to what we consider "the media". And that involves electronic journalism and the Internet. "In a court decision that was largely overlooked by the mainstream media, a New York Supreme Court judge has issued a ruling in a libel case that extends the same speech protections to online journalists that their print, radio, and TV colleagues have enjoyed." (Regan 13) But, the idea of "protection" only means it is now harder to prove libel and slander. It does not mean that journalists in any media can simply write stories and hope they are not sued; knowing some of the information may well be libelous or slanderous.
A good example of how the Internet can seem to cause problems is a case in Atlanta. A Georgia Tech grad
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1339
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
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