Public Officials & Public Men

The U.S. ideal of unhampered public debate on public issues got an unprecedented boost in 1963 when the Supreme Court raised the First Amendment right of free speech as a shield against state libel laws. That shield, ruled the court in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, prevents a public official from collecting damages for even false criticism of his conduct, unless he proves that the statement was "made with 'actual malice'--that is, with knowledge that it was false, or with reckless disregard of whether it was or not."

That decision placed a huge burden of proof on plaintiffs in libel cases involving public officials. Equally significant, however, was something the court did not do. It did not define "public official," and alert libel lawyers and judges began to suggest that the words could really be translated into the far more general "public figure."

The suggestion has just been declared to be law in a notable ruling of U.S. District Judge James F. Gordon in a $2,000,000 libel suit against two Louisville newspapers and a radio station. The plaintiff: former Army Major General Edwin F. Walker. The defendants, charged Walker, defamed him by publishing and broadcasting wire-service reports suggesting that he incited student race rioters at the University of Mississippi in 1962.

Admittedly "plowing new ground," Judge Gordon ruled that even though Walker was no public official when he surfaced at Ole Miss, the Times decision inescapably reaches a self-elected "public man," which Walker was at the time.

"Public men," said the judge, "are public property." In a signal victory for the U.S. press, Judge Gordon found the defendants not guilty of actual malice, since they merely transmitted what they believed to be accurate news. He thereupon dismissed the case "with prejudice," meaning that Walker cannot refile a similar suit against the Louisville defendants.

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