Powerful forces want to dismantle libel protections. These three books explain why it matters.

The U.S. Supreme Court. Photo (cc) 2020 by APK.

When the Supreme Court ruled in 1964 that news organizations need no longer fear ruinous libel judgments over small, inadvertent errors, it sparked an explosion of investigative reporting. A direct line connects the court’s decision in New York Times v. Sullivan — inevitably described as a “landmark” — and journalism that exposes government secrecy and corruption at the national, state and local levels.

Under Times v. Sullivan, a public official who sues for libel must show that a defamatory statement was made with “actual malice,” a term of art that means the statement was published “with knowledge of its falsity or with reckless disregard of whether it was true or false.” Later rulings extended actual malice to public figures.

But though Times v. Sullivan freed the press to uncover government lying in the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, the backlash began almost immediately. That backlash is the subject of a new book by New York Times reporter David Enrich called “Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful.”

“Murder the Truth” also prompts a look back at two earlier books that examine the historical and legal significance of the Sullivan decision — “Actual Malice: Civil Rights and Freedom of the Press in New York Times v. Sullivan” (2023), by Samantha Barbas, and “Make No Law: The Sullivan Case and the First Amendment” (1991), by Anthony Lewis. It is Enrich’s book, though, that speaks to the urgency of this calamitous moment, as well as the fate of the free press during President Donald Trump’s second term.

Read the rest at Poynter Online.

My 1996 interview with the late Nat Hentoff about his years at Down Beat magazine

Nat Hentoff. Photo (cc) 2004 by K.G. Schneider.
Nat Hentoff. Photo (cc) 2004 by K.G. Schneider.

The great journalist and civil libertarian Nat Hentoff died on Saturday at the age of 91. In 1996 I had the privilege of interviewing Hentoff and his former colleague Dom Cerulli for Northeastern University’s alumni magazine. Hentoff and Cerulli, who died in 2013, were both Northeastern alumni, and both served as the editor of the jazz magazine Down Beat in the 1950s. I can’t find the clip, but I did manage to dig up my last rewrite before I turned the article in to my editor. I cannot defend the way the piece opens; all I can say is that I’m glad I’ve continued to improve as a writer. Hentoff was a giant. His death creates a deep void, especially at this moment of crisis.

It was the 1950s, Manhattan, 52nd Street. And it seemed like the whole world was in a groove.

Check it out—over there, at the Five Spot. It’s Thelonious Monk, plunking out the chords to “ ’Round Midnight” on the house piano.

Charlie Parker’s seen better days. You know how it is: sometimes he shows up, sometimes he doesn’t. But he’s still Bird, and if he can borrow an alto sax he’s supposed to be playing tonight at Birdland, the club they named after him.

Dizzy Gillespie’s around, of course, only now he’s not playing much bop. He’s got himself this new trumpet that’s bent up toward the ceiling, and he’s doing some Afro-Cuban thing.

Like the old guys? Well, they’re still holding forth. Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, you name it.

Miles Davis, that skinny kid trumpet player who used to be in Bird’s band, is starting to turn heads. And Charles Mingus has a band that’s making the biggest, wildest noise you’ve ever heard.

“It was magical. It was incredible,” says Barry Kernfeld, editor of “The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz” (St. Martin’s, 1994).

It was also a hell of a lot to keep track of.

And from 1952 to ’59, two of the most important witnesses to this musical revolution were a couple of Northeastern guys, Nat Hentoff (Class of 1944) and Dom Cerulli (Class of 1951). They were the New York eyes and ears of Down Beat, a Chicago-based magazine that was—and still is—the most authoritative publication covering jazz.

Continue reading “My 1996 interview with the late Nat Hentoff about his years at Down Beat magazine”

Nat Hentoff signs off, vows not to retire

Nat Hentoff has written his farewell column for the Village Voice after his unconscionable layoff. Hentoff quotes Tom Wicker’s tribute to I.F. Stone: “He never lost his sense of rage.”

I’ve called Hentoff and Molly Ivins the two best columnists never to win a Pulitzer. It’s still not too late for Hentoff, who, at 83, vows not to retire.