Anti-Press, There or Here

Zimbabwe’s notoriously repressive government recently arrested two journalists and put them on trial for allegedly publishing falsehoods. Two other journalists recently got the same treatment in Wyandotte County, Kansas. This is bad governance, whether it happens in Africa or North America.

In the case closest to home, a free tabloid newspaper reported that Kansas City Mayor Carol Marinovich and her husband, a county judge, did not live in the county. They did. The district attorney brought charges against the paper’s publisher and its editor. A jury decided that the two knew the information was wrong and didn’t care. It found them guilty of criminal defamation, a crime in Kansas punishable by up to a year in jail.

Don’t get us wrong. Lying is repugnant--even more so when done in print. It can undermine a person’s reputation. It hurts society and journalism by eroding fragile public confidence in the press, an institution that is supposed to act as a watchdog over government institutions and elected officials.

Within intentionally narrow guidelines, the 1st Amendment allows people who have been libeled to sue in civil court and receive damages for harm done to their reputations--even public figures, although they have additional hurdles to clear, such as proving that the reporters acted with malice.

What’s problematic is a law that lets the government swagger in and arrest or jail someone for reporting something that a mayor, district attorney, governor, president or the guy next door doesn’t want to hear--even if it turns out to be untrue. Look at Zimbabwe and the other countries where oppressive cranks or leaders with an immature grasp of basic democratic principles use the power of criminal laws to suppress dissent and chill unflattering reportage.

Fewer than half of the states in the U.S. have criminal defamation statutes. None should.

We agree with free-press advocates in Africa, who are fighting Zimbabwe’s repressive anti-press measures, and in Kansas, where they seek to repeal the state criminal libel law.