Much Ado about politics

Governor Ron DeSantis' bugling the Supreme Court to overturn the 59-year-old free speech shield of New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) epitomizes opportunism

A simple question. You know the simple answer.

Why did Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, Harvard Law School graduate, wait until his presidential candidacy in 2023 to issue a cri de coeur for the Supreme Court to overrule its 59-year-old landmark precedent in New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) constitutionally shielding the media from nitpicking defamation suits? The case sits in plain view. Its discovery does not require an archeological expedition.

Every politician acts exclusively with an ulterior motive: self-aggrandizement. An issue is never examined on the merits, but only with reference to whether there is an an angle that would benefit the politician’s insatiable craving for power. The Indiana House voted in 1897 (House Bill 246) to set the value of pi at 3 to curry favor with voters who are terrified by complexity or uncertainty.

The mainstream media tilts left, with the exception of Fox and maybe Twitter under Elon Musk’s ownership. The latter is an airhead when it comes to government, justice, politics, or ethics.

The media bias is not born of the Constitution or laws. Conservatives generally don’t read, write, or reflect. To develop the cerebral faculties is to invite the conservative epithet “elitist.” Antisemite Henry Ford famously declared, “History is more or less bunk.” But liberal John Maynard Keynes understood, “Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler a few years back.”

Conservatives possess more than ample funds to own the mainstream media and change the bias from liberal to conservative by following Fox’s playbook. (Bias is inescapable. There are no facts, only interpretations, Frederick Nietzsche observed). But conservatives refrain from buying the mainstream media or underwriting a new conservative competitor because they myopically believe a single ducat is worth millions of ideas. It speaks volumes that DeSantis has refrained from exhorting conservatives to buy the media outlets he mercilessly disparages. His educational preoccupation is with diminishing, not expanding, a free marketplace of ideas. Why is he not demanding that the University of Chicago’s Great Books Program be mandatory in all Florida high schools, colleges, and universities?

Now back to the main road. The New York Times decision held that the First Amendment prohibits defamation liability for criticizing public officials absent proof by clear and convincing evidence that a defamatory falsehood (in contrast to an opinion) was published with knowledge of its falsity or with reckless disregard of whether it was true or not, i.e., published with actual malice. Sequel decisions expanded the actual malice requirement to curb defamation suits by “public figures.”

The precedents had little impact on the media. Drew Pearson and his epigones were into investigative reporting and assailing public officials and muckamucks for decades without the legal shield of New York Times. Defamation suits are rare because they call unwanted attention to the defamatory allegations against the plaintiff. Negative first impressions can seldom if ever be cured. Further, media outlets did not lower their journalistic standards for accuracy in the aftermath of New York Times. They live or die on reputation. And no study of journalism since 1964 has unearthed a crumb of evidence that the incidence of media errors has jumped under the actual malice rule.

Mr. DeSantis sermonized that his trumpet against New York Times was not for himself but was “standing up for the little guy against these massive media conglomerates.” But if that were true, DeSantis should be arguing for a scaling back of the precedent to cover only public officials or candidates but not private persons who are unwillingly dragged into the limelight. The conservative Florida Governor intoxicated with presidential ambitions, however, is using a blunderbuss, not a scalpel, against the New York Times shield.

DeSantis, like all politicians, is never on the merits. That is why neither he nor they should ever be trusted to do the right thing.