William Ketter, a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor, former Pulitzer board member and past president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, has written a fine op-ed piece on the Herald libel case. Ketter goes right after the dubious notion — recently endorsed by the state’s Supreme Judicial Court — that Herald reporter Dave Wedge knew his […]
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The Herald has asked the state’s Supreme Judicial Court to reconsider its decision to uphold a $2.1 million libel verdict against the paper. The Herald lost a 2005 trial in a suit brought by Superior Court Judge Ernest Murphy, who charged that Herald falsely and recklessly reported that he had demeaned a teenage rape victim. […]
I’m going to pronounce myself officially blogged out on the subject. But I do want to call your attention to Adam Reilly’s smart piece on the Herald libel decision, which has been posted on the Phoenix’s Web site and will appear in tomorrow’s paper. Pay careful attention to the words of First Amendment lawyer Jonathan […]
Not to keep flogging the equine carcass, but I’m puzzled by this passage in today’s New York Times account of the Herald libel case. Times reporter Pam Belluck writes: In February 2005, a jury found [for] the judge after testimony about some inaccuracies in the articles and statements from two of Mr. Wedge’s sources that […]
The Boston Herald’s reporting on Superior Court Judge Ernest Murphy may have been egregious, but it was hardly the only news outlet that ran stories on Murphy’s perceived leniency. Dave Wedge and Jules Crittenden’s first Herald story on Murphy, “Murphy’s Law,” appeared on Feb. 13, 2002. (Crittenden’s contribution was not an issue in Murphy’s libel […]
The state’s Supreme Judicial Court, in a strongly worded opinion, has upheld a $2.1 million libel verdict against the Boston Herald. In March 2005 the Herald lost a suit brought by Superior Court Judge Ernest Murphy, who’d been characterized by the Herald in 2002 as a “wrist-slapping judge” who had “heartlessly demeaned” victims of crime […]
In an irony that only media junkies could appreciate, Boston Herald reporter Dave Wedge today grills Bristol County District Attorney Paul Walsh over his office’s decision to drop a drunken-driving case against a “politically connected socialite.” It was Wedge’s reliance on sources in Walsh’s office (including Walsh himself) that led the Herald to lose a […]
If the First Amendment means anything, it means that the media and citizens are free to report vigorously on — and to criticize — the actions of public officials in the course of performing their governmental duties. And if the Supreme Court’s landmark 1964 libel decision, Times v. Sullivan, means anything, it means that public […]
On to the appeals court: the libel-suit saga involving the Boston Herald and Judge Ernest Murphy continues, as the trial judge, Charles Johnson, has refused the Herald’s requests to act in response to Murphy’s over-the-top letters to Herald publisher Pat Purcell. Phoenix coverage here; Globe coverage here; Herald coverage here.
Despite my determination not to get sucked into blogland this week, things keep coming up. This morning I listened to a voice-mail left last week (sorry) by someone who didn’t identify himself, but who sounded as though he is a lawyer. He seemed to be quite familiar with Superior Court Judge Ernest Murphy’s libel case […]