Assembly Panel OKs Bill Against Defamation

Call it the Under Siege by the Tabloids Bill, or perhaps the Mad-About-You Paparazzi Act.

An Assembly committee Wednesday approved legislation that would make it a crime to knowingly publish or broadcast lies and profit from it, after Hollywood stars Steven Seagal and Paul Reiser told lawmakers about how they and others in their profession are ravaged by the tabloids.

After approving the bill on a 9-0 vote, one Assembly Judiciary Committee member got Seagal’s autograph, and Seagal and Reiser proceeded to Speaker Curt Pringle’s office, and posed for photos with Pringle at the dais in the Assembly chamber.

In legislation endorsed by the Screen Actors Guild, Sen. Charles Calderon (D-Whittier) is attempting to reestablish the crime of defamation. His bill (SB 1583) provides for a year in jail and $10,000 fine for companies, corporate officers and others including editors involved in publishing or broadcasting defamatory lies and profiting from it.

“We don’t have to tolerate these lies,” Calderon said, flanked by Seagal, star of the “Under Siege” movies, and Reiser, star of the television show “Mad About You.”

“We are human beings with families,” Seagal, wearing a gold brocade jacket, told the committee, adding that celebrities, like everyone else, “deserve the right to our dignity and good name.”

In 1994, Seagal accused a woman of peddling false information to the tabloids in an effort to capitalize from his divorce. Reiser told the committee that when his child was born prematurely last year, tabloid reporters made repeated attempts to sneak into the hospital in pursuit of their “story.”

Now, people can bring civil lawsuits for libel and win monetary damages if publications print defamatory articles. Slander suits can be brought over defamatory broadcasts. In order to win a libel suit, public figures such as Hollywood stars and politicians must show that a publication maliciously and recklessly disregarded the truth.

Spoken and written defamation--defined as impugning a person’s honesty or reputation, causing economic damage to the victim--has not been a crime in California since 1976 when a California court of appeals struck it down. The Legislature removed the criminal--but not civil--libel and slander statutes in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Although Calderon’s bill would reinstitute defamation as a crime, he says the measure would define the crime in a way that would ensure that the measure would withstand attacks in the court.

Under his bill, it would be a misdemeanor to receive money for knowingly being the source of defamatory information, and for engaging in a pattern of paying for the false information and publishing or broadcasting it.

Calderon said he doubts that the law would be enforced often, and that criminal defamation would be hard to prove in court. But he also predicted that if the measure becomes law, tabloids would be deterred from publishing or airing defamatory pieces without making at least an attempt to verify the truth.

At least two Republican committee members raised concerns that the legislation could be extended to political speech--including hit mailers sent during campaigns against their political foes.

Calderon assured them that the bill was not aimed at campaigning, noting, “Political speech is not for profit,” a comment that elicited much laughter in the crowded committee room.

The Teamsters Union, California Newspaper Publishers Assn. and American Civil Liberties Union opposed the measure. A Teamster lobbyist warned that under Calderon’s bill, union leaders might get jailed for making derogatory comments during labor strikes.

Thomas Newton, lobbyist for the newspaper publishers, said criminalizing speech is “a bad idea in China and a terrible idea in California.”

“You cannot create a box and put tabloids in it and not the mainstream press,” Newton said. The publishers association represents most newspapers in California, but not tabloids such as the National Enquirer.

Before reaching Gov. Pete Wilson’s desk, Calderon’s bill must clear one more Assembly committee, the Assembly floor and return to the Senate. However, a similar bill by Calderon has been stalled in a Senate committee.