[First published in AM New York]
DEFAMATION LAWYERS are gearing up for a new bonanza – now that Google is to extend its reach into the fresh treasure-trove of television transcripts.
They are preparing to unleash a slew of actions against journalists who venture onto talk shows. Perhaps lulled into a false sense of security by the apparently ephemeral nature of broadcasting, scribes have often sounded off into the thin air with risky statements that they would never commit to cold print.
As I reported in my Media Beat column last month, Vanity Fair writer Dominic Dunne has already fallen foul of his own loose lips by telling tales on TV and radio concerning exCongressman Gary Condit and the death of Washington intern Chandra Levy. They were stories about which Dunne later admitted on oath: “I can’t vouch for any of this.” Condit is suing Dunne for $11 million.
‘Googling’ will inevitably make loose talk more prone to capture and close examination.
One Manhattan libel lawyer told me:
“I have a bunch of celebrity clients who want my associates and interns to simply roam cyberspace and find pundits saying anything that harms my clients’ reputations. Then we’ll slam them with an action. It’s easy – these people always say things out loud that they wouldn’t write down.”
Something odd does often seem to happen when a writer enters a studio. The New York Times‘ controversial reporter Judith Miller (who happens also to be legally besieged on a totally separate matter) has drawn brickbats from the paper’s Public Editor, Daniel Okrent.
Her offense? – Going on MSNBC‘s “Hardball” with Chris Matthews to claim, remarkably, that the Bush administration was “reaching out” to the oncefavored, then dropped Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi, and could even be arranging a new top government position for him.
“Miller’s statement was a shocker” said Okrent, “It didn’t appear in the Times … and it still hasn’t appeared.”
Condit’s attorney, L Lin Wood, argues that on-air chatter should be made more
accountable, so the public “will not allow themselves to be fooled into believing that ‘talking heads’ know what they are talking about. They usually do not.”
ONE OF THE STRONGEST, deepest voices ever heard is now stilled.
Writer, actor, producer, director, and ceaseless champion of freedom Ossie Davis (above, left) will be much missed.
Speaking personally, my greatest regret will be that few people ever heard a narration he recorded for a documentary I made, about a long-hidden, KKK-inspired racial massacre in 1920s Florida.
Ossie told me how his father’s vivid recollection of a Klansman’s threat to shoot him “like a dog” had first inspired him to become a storyteller, and Ossie delivered our script with a rare passion and power. But the TV network that bought the film wanted something less “hot” – vibrant tones were replaced with a more conventional (and incidentally white) narrator.
But I still hear Ossie’s voice.
His funeral will be Saturday at noon at Riverside Church on the Upper West Side. Visiting will be from 5 to 11 p.m. Friday, at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem.
