erns a public official, that official must show actual malice on the part of the defendant in making the statement. Actual malice in this context means that the defendant must have had actual knowledge that the statement is false or act with reckless disregard of whether the statement is true or false.
The Court reasoned that without such restrictions on the law of defamation, defendants would censor themselves. This could mean that individuals would avoid criticizing public officials out of the fear of liability, even though the public had an important interest in those figures. The Court recognized that occasional false statements are inevitable in free debate and must be tolerated in order to prevent a chilling effect on the free exchange of ideas. Thus, requiring a showing of actual malice served the First Amendment's goal of promoting uninhibited, robust, and open debate on the activities of those persons holding the public's trust.
The Court then expanded this First Amendment protection to situations involving public figures, as well as officials, in 1967. In Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts, the publishers of the Saturday Evening Post were sued for defamation arising out of an article which alleged that Butts, the athletic director at University of Georgia, and Paul "Bear" Bryant, the head football coach at the University of Alabama, had conspired to fix a football game between their teams. The publishers said that the story came from a citizen who had claimed that he had tapped into a telephone conversation between the two parties. The lower court found the publishers liable for defamation and the Supreme Court upheld this ruling.
The Supreme Court said that while the defendants did not know the story was false, its decision to publish the story on the basis of this one citizen's strange tale violated basic journalistic standards. Thus, the Court held that the lesser standard of gross negligence was mo...