Chapter 13

Journalists will eventually offend someone.

It doesn't matter whether they are hard news reporters, feature writers or columnists, writers cannot make everyone happy all the time. What they must do is make sure they maintain their credibility and the credibility of their institution.

Columnists have an obligation to report the truth. Despite that, chapter 13 states that the average award for a libel or privacy case at the time it was written was $2.9 million.

The First Amendment grants journalists a good working defence, but not immunity from law suits or loss of readership.

Libel is the biggest cause of this. Libel is defamation through published media that demonstratively harmed the plaintiff's reputation, and was published through the negligence, recklessness or intent to harm.

Truth is the best defence against libel, but only if it's documented or provable.

Qualified privilege is a secondary defence. When something is said in an official proceeding, such as a court case, and is quoted ver batim, it cannot be held against the reporter. Qualified privilege holds up even when it covers false or defaming information.

Fair comment on public proceedings is somewhat different. It is written as the right to comment on matters of public interest so long as they are fair and accurate.

Fair comment is the defence is often used as an umbrella defence for comments on public acts, proceedings, performances and appearances.

There are many strategies to use in order to avoid the courtroom and the need to use these defences at all.

Be journalistically sound, double-check facts, avoid cheap shots, question neutral reportage, remember no one is really "fair game" and handle all writing carefully.

Public figures have a harder time proving libel in the court room, but even if they lose, your institute still stands to lose time and money defending itself. So be fair to everyone and make sure that what you write about so-called public figures pertains to the part of their lives that is in the public's eyes.

Privacy is another matter, when is the story invasive and harmful? That is something every writer must ask when dealing with sensitive topics.

Finally, there is the ancient pitfalls of plagiarism and copyright violation.
Writers can cite other writers as long as they attribute fairly and don't take large portions of work. But doing so risks the loss of original thought. Information isn't copyrighted, but news stories are.

Writers can lift attributed quotes from copyrighted materials when commenting or critiquing them, but they cannot pass them off as their own. That is plagiarism, one of biggest taboos of journalism.

As long as writers treat every story with care and remember that lawsuits are a real possibility they can minimize their risks and maintain credibility in the journalism world.