Under Times v. Sullivan, a public official who sues for libel must show that a defamatory statement was made with “actual malice,” a term of art that means the statement was published “with knowledge of its falsity or with reckless disregard of whether it was true or false.” Later rulings extended actual malice to public figures.
But though Times v. Sullivan freed the press to uncover government lying in the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, the backlash began almost immediately. That backlash is the subject of a new book by New York Times reporter David Enrich called “Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful.”
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