BILLS: Threaten freedom of speech

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Block wrote on the foundation’s website news alerts page.

“This legislation would also subject bloggers, community groups, average users of social media – in short everybody who wants their voices heard – to the untold financial and emotional burdens of lawsuits,” according to Block, who suggests that Floridians “protect your freedom of speech by using yours to tell your representatives to throw out HB 991.”

The Freedom of the Press Foundation, a New York-based 501(c) (3) nonprofit organization whose mission statement asserts that it “protects, defends, and empowers public-interest journalism in the 21st century,” views the bills as a threat to a landmark court case protecting a free press.

The 1964 U.S. Supreme Court defamation case, New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, “ruled that when suing for defamation, plaintiffs who are public officials have to prove actual malice - that their critics knew their statements were false or recklessly disregarded the truth. Later decisions extended the requirement to other public figures at the center of newsworthy debates,” wrote Seth Stern, director of advocacy for the foundation, in a guest column for the Tampa Bay Times.

The difficult-to-prove standard is necessary, in the court’s opinion, written by Justice William J. Brennan Jr., because “debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust and wide open,” including “vehement, caustic and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.”

In addition to judicial protection, “The freedom of speech and of the press is enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution and is necessary to promote the vigorous dialogue necessary to shape public policy in a representative democracy,” according to a recent article in the Federal Communications Law Journal advocating state legislation to protect those freedoms.

The proposed Florida bills would have the opposite effect.

Bills Would Undermine Defamation Law

If the House bill passes, a statement by an anonymous source –such as the FBI’s Mark Felt ("Deep Throat"), who helped Washington Post reporters uncover the Watergate scandal during the Nixon administration – would be presumed