Tabloid pays $1m for repeat of libel

By: Joe Strupp The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week that the tabloid newspaper The Globe will have to pay a $1 million libel award to a California man after repeating an author's claim that the man, not Sirhan Sirhan, killed Robert F. Kennedy.
The high court justices, withholding comment, ruled on May 17 that a lower court decision allowing the libel award to remain could stand, according to the Associated Press. The ruling affirms a previous decision by California's highest court that the news media can be liable for repeating someone else's libelous statement about a private figure.
The decision, although not precedent-setting, means that a $1.175 million award to Khalid Khawar, a Bakersfield, Calif. farmer, will have to be paid by the tabloid newspaper. Khawar was covering Kennedy's presidential campaign for a publication in his native Pakistan in 1968 when the then-Senator from New York was assassinated in Los Angeles.
Globe attorneys had argued that the state court's ruling "seriously threatens the right of the media to accurately report previously published allegations of public concern."
The ruling focused on a 1989 Globe article that reported on a book in which conspiracy theorist Robert Morrow claimed Kennedy's murder had been plotted by Iranian secret police and organized crime. The book included a photo of Khawar with Kennedy at the hotel where the assassination occurred and said Khawar was Pakistani assassin Ali Ahmand.
Khawar was not named in the article, but he claimed his photograph was recognized and that he and his children later received death threats and had their home and car vandalized.
A jury awarded Khawar $675,000 in compensatory damages and $500,000 in punitive damages for the Globe's "actual malice."
When the jury's decision was later reviewed by the California Supreme Court, a group of media organizations argued in support of the tabloid and argued that "neutral reportage" is necessary for covering public controversies. But the state court said that the Globe had "obvious reasons to doubt the accuracy" of the book.
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