Hell, I'll get high and do the shooting! My pleasure, dearies.

----- I, for one, renounce our insect overlords!

The First Amendment doesn't give you freedom from having to deal with the consequences of your speech.  Libel and harassment are not protected.

But the First Amendment does prevent the government from attaching consequences to your speech.  If people are outraged by Nancy Grace and boycott her advertisers, that's a "consequence" that she must bear.  But if a court looks at what she said and decides that, because she said it, she must pay a huge damages award, then that's a "consequence" that the government is making her bear.  That's a First Amendment problem, because it's something the government did.

When journalists screw up, it is always tempting to hold their feet to the fire.  But if you do that, journalistic speech gets chilled.  That's why libel and slander are protected, when the plaintiff is a public official.

Grace and CNN aren't being charged with having libeled and slandered Duckett.  They are being charged with Grace having conducted a reckless and injurious interview with the woman.  To whit, Duckett was asked to appear on Grace's show "to discuss her child's disappearance."  There was no discussion, merely a full-fledged, double-barrelled assault on her, accusing her of having killed her child and disposed of the body.  In doing this she lured an emotionally fragile individual to appear on camera, exposing her to the view of millions of viewers, and assaulted her.  I'm fairly sure the contention is that Grace ought to have known that she was not dealing with someone who was completely in command of her emotions and capable of dealing with what Grace might describe as her "aggressive newsgathering" style.  To whit, the interview "so outrageous in character, and so extreme in degree, as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency."  CNN is dragged into it because it gave Grace the platform from which to do her target shooting.

But, if you still believe that CNN and Grace are subject to a savage First Amendment attack, I suggest you contact CNN and advise them they should think seriously about invoking Sullivan as an absolute defense against the Duckett suit.  I'd be surprised if they hadn't already thought about that gambit (they do pay big bucks for sharp lawyering and all).  I'm thinking the reason they didn't is that they realize the difference between the two cases and that the gambit would be a waste of time.

Illegitimi non carborundum.

I have to admit I don't know the difference between liable or slander, but would accusing someone of killing a child...assuming that person is innocent...constitute one of the two?

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

But where, in describing what Grace did, do you mention anything other than speech?  Colorful phrases like "double-barrelled assault" are just metaphors; Grace didn't actually touch the woman at all.  She yelled at her, and got all nasty, and did it on live TV, and did it on false pretences -- but does that mean the government gets to regulate how Grace runs her show?  

I guess this disproves the old saw that "sticks and stones might break my bones but words can never hurt me."  I would disagree that people can't be held responsible for the consequences of their speech.  Lori Drew is facing    some serious criminal charges because she posed as a young teenager on the internet, enticing a young, unstable teenaged girl into believing "he" might be interested in her.  "He" suckered her into such a state of emotional attachment that when "he" turned on her, told her she was worthless and should kill herself, she did.  How did she know how unstable the girl was?  She was a neighbor of Drew's.  Now, the only things Drew did was say she was someone else and tell the girl, once she gained her trust, to go kill herself.  She didn't assault the girl or even touch her?  Where is Lori Drew's First Amendment rights by your reckoning?

Illegitimi non carborundum.

So long as you don't say anything bad about George Bush or his corporate overlords, your 1st Amendment rights are infinite.

Isn't speaking an action?

It's not the same sort of action, and it's disingenuous to suggest that it is.  It's one thing to punch someone in the face (that's a crime).  It's another to insult someone verbally (not a crime).  You've been to many protests, I imagine.  Do you think the police have the right to arrest every protest that calls them a fascist pig and hurts their feelings?  That's the line that we're going down if we make Grace's actions a crime.

In my opinion, it's just as disingenuous to suggest that what she did was tantamount to a crowd of protestors shouting "pig" at the police. She essentially accused Duckett of having killed her child and disposed of the body. At that point, Duckett was officially listed as a suspect by the police.

It's perhaps just as well to note who was the person in the position of power. It was Grace and CNN. They invited Duckett on to ask her questions with the assurance she would be able to tell her side of the story and let America know how devastating it was to have a child disappear. Once on camera, there was never a question what Grace and CNN were after -- to break Duckett down and gain a blubbery on-air confession. Grace controlled the questions. Indeed, the obviously flustered Duckett didn't know what hit her and she was having problems gathering her thoughts. Grace would have none of that, continuing the line of questioning until it was apparent they had broken Duckett but weren't going to get a confession.

You may think that Grace's performance was a valid assertion of free speech, but I disagree. It was as much an act of outright cruelty as if she had waterboarded Duckett on-air.

Illegitimi non carborundum.

In the last sentence in my lead off paragraph, it should read: "At that point, Duckett was not officially listed as a suspect by the police.

Illegitimi non carborundum.

It was as much an act of outright cruelty as if she had waterboarded Duckett on-air. Hyperbole, much? Duckett always had the option to leave, to just ignore what Grace was saying, or whatever (this is, I would argue, part of what differentiates the Grace case from those Dateline specials - in those cases you do have a certain amount of entrapment, harrasment, & occasionally maybe even false imprisonment). As far as I can tell Duckett was under no coercion, there weren't any armed security guards keeping her in the studio or what have you. Where do you draw the line here? What if CNN had just been covering the Duckett case in a very nasty way, but never interviewed her, and the woman still committed suicide - what, under your criteria, makes that substantially different than what actually happened? Would you support the family's lawsuit if they sued under those circumstances?

Suppose Nancy Grace had not booked this woman at all, but instead, at the top of her show, looked straight into the camera and announced that this woman murdered her kid.  The woman sees this, and commits suicide.  Would that change things, in your mind?

I ask this hypothetical because I think you might be hitting on something: you aren't so much concerned with the content of what Nancy Grace said, but the circumstances under which she said it.  If she had made the same accusation, but without bringing this woman on under false pretenses and making things tough for her on-air, it would be a lot easier to defend her.  It could well be that the First Amendment protects the content of what she said, but not her conduct in setting up the interview and conducting it as she did.

The scenario you laid out seems more like a classic case of slander or libel (I forget what making false accusations about someone on the airwaves is called). However, you have hit the nail directly on the nail I've been pounding here. The context and circumstances under which Duckett was placed by Grace make me believe there was an intent to inflict emotional distress on her. Grace wanted an on-air confession in the worst way and went at it tooth and nail, never considering for one moment that Duckett might not be guilty or what sort of impact her act might have had on the woman.

Perversely, Duckett may have been responsible for her child's disappearance. But, because Duckett's act after being confronted by Grace was to kill herself, if she was responsible, nobody ever finds out the truth. One of the interesting (to me) aspects of this is, is it possible to so seriously harass and embarass and humiliate an innocent person to the point that they feel totally defenseless against an assault that they reach the point where they'll kill themselves. I'm guessing the answer to that is "yes".

Illegitimi non carborundum.

Duckett was under no protective or gag orders from authorities but at what point also does Grace become liable for tampering with an investigation? She can certainly say whatever she wants from her own soapbox but bringing a key person of interest specifically onto her television has obviously compromised the investigation. There is saying your piece (which didn't require Duckett to be there) and then there is interrogating a witness which she is not professionally trained to do.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

Duckett was under no protective or gag orders from authorities but at what point also does Grace become liable for tampering with an investigation? She can certainly say whatever she wants from her own soapbox but bringing a key person of interest specifically onto her television has obviously compromised the investigation. There is saying your piece (which didn't require Duckett to be there) and then there is interrogating a witness which she is not professionally trained to do.

So journalists are no longer allowed to interview witnesses to a crime?  Since when?  Do you really think it's a good idea to complete ban journalists from the legal system?  Perhaps all that public scrutiny is the problem - press coverage, jury trials, public trials, who needs 'em?  Perhaps we should just have secret trials by government appointed tribunals, so the public can't interfere at all with the perfect, flawless workings of the justice system?

The scenario you laid out seems more like a classic case of slander or libel (I forget what making false accusations about someone on the airwaves is called).

It's only slander / libel if it's proven not to be true (in the US, anyway - the law in the UK is much more restrictive).  Even then, if the person had a reasonable belief that the statement was true the charge might not stick (hence why rags like the Enquirer often get away with printing some fairly sketchy accusations).  If there was a slander / libel case to be brought against Grace, I think it would have happened by now.  The fact is the family probably doesn't want such a case because they're afraid of how it might turn out - if the jury finds that Grace had a reasonable belief Duckett was guilty, well, that doesn't look very good, does it?  

is it possible to so seriously harass and embarrass and humiliate an innocent person to the point that they feel totally defenseless against an assault that they reach the point where they'll kill themselves. I'm guessing the answer to that is "yes".

The question is what is a reasonable standard here?  This CNN thing was a one-time interview.  Duckett had the option to get up and walk away at any point.  This wasn't classical harassment.  Grace wasn't showing up at Duckett's private residence at all hours of the morning trying to bully her into confessing, or anything like that.  If she (or her lackies) was (were) doing something like that, then yes, I think there's a case here.  As far as I can tell, though, Duckett willingly came on the show and was never physically prevented from leaving or ending the interview, even after it went south.  How much protection do we have to provide people with for you to be happy, MB?  If some politician accused of scandal breaks down and commits suicide before the investigation even begins, does that mean his family should be allowed to sue the TV station that broke the story?  Perhaps we should just ban investigative journalism all together, since it might make someone upset?  Where do you draw the line?

You've undoubtedly heard of this phenomenon.  In humans, it comes about by being totally paralyzed because of an attack so quick and so shocking and so unexpected that you simply don't know what to do.  I'm assuming that's what happened to Duckett.  She came on the show expecting to be questioned about her child, probably assuming she would be allowed to make a plea for the return of the child.  Was it her decision to walk onto the set with Grace and begin the interview, yeah.  But there was no background on the child, no preliminary questioning, no air space for a plea.  There was just Nancy Grace playing the part of detective, prosecuting attorney and judge, accusing her of killing her child and disposing of the body.  It was non-stop and Duckett looked like she had been poleaxed.  It kept up until Grace and her producer decided to go to a commercial after which Duckett had left the set.

Now, you ask me, "How much protection do we have to provide people with for you to be happy, MB?"  It's not a question of me being happy or not, it's about me empathizing with someone like Duckett, who just might be completely innocent and in such an emotional state that she really shouldn't have opted to go on the Grace show.  It's about someone like Grace understanding that she holds a mighty power in her grasp -- the power to do good and elicit information and the power to do bad and destroy a person.  And yes, it really is a case of good versus bad when Grace goes right for the jugular on someone nobody had even mentioned as a person of interest in the disappearance of the child.  So really I have to turn your question back on you port, "How much cruelty and insensitivity does the media have to show to people who have suffered loss and are in grief for you to be happy, port?"

Nice try to equate what happened to Duckett with the gritty investigative work done to out some corrupt politician, but that's not what happened.  In the case of the corrupt politician, the media was doing its job reporting on a crime, with facts and information to buttress their findings.  In the Duckett case, there was none of that; it was a barefaced and very public accusation by a major media figure against someone the authorities hadn't even gotten around to suspecting of anything.

Illegitimi non carborundum.

"How much cruelty and insensitivity does the media have to show to people who have suffered loss and are in grief for you to be happy, port?"

It's not about me being happy or not.  It's about protecting a fundamental right to freedom of the press.  I don't care for Grace, but I am absolutely cautious about creating any precedent that could be used to restrict those rights.  You laugh off the notion that there is any equation between this and a political case.  I find it to be quite likely that we will soon see these same arguments turned toward political investigations.  Time, I suppose, will tell which one of us is right.

It's not about you or I being made happy. I do get the sense that you believe anytime someone like Nancy Grace opens their mouth and says something that if their words have consequences they can furl themselves up in the First Amendment and proclaim their invulnerability. How much police authority do you believe the public should surrender to people like Grace that they can turn a spotlight on people and blithely accuse them of crimes? This isn't Grace going after a powerful politician. This isn't Grace gathering news. This isn't even Grace making an accusation based upon evidence or facts. This is Grace attacking a private individual based upon her guess that Duckett was at the bottom of the child's disappearance.

Furthermore, I'd appreciate it if you didn't attempt to read my mind and assume that I was "laughing off" anything. I merely said I didn't see the Grace vs. Duckett thing being the same as the media exposing a politician for his or her misdeeds.

Illegitimi non carborundum.

How much police authority do you believe the public should surrender to people like Grace that they can turn a spotlight on people and blithely accuse them of crimes?

Where do you get the notion that anyone is surrendering "police authority" to Grace?  I've already noted that I think reporters can take it too far (i.e I think the "To Catch a Predator" stings cross the line).  Grace, though, so far as I can tell, is just engaging in words.  Harsh, abusive words, yes, but just words.  She never detained anyone, she never tried to trick anyone into engaging in criminal activity.  She did try to trick / bully Duckett into a confession, but there's nothing unusual about that - reporters try to get scoops on criminal cases all the time.  

What's strange to me is that most of the criticism of Grace in this thread seems to be conflating two issues.  The first is Grace's tactics - basically, was she "too mean" to Duckett.  The second is Duckett's guilt (or innocence).  I've seen a lot of people imply that Grace was slandering Duckett by stating Duckett was guilty.  This would only be true if Duckett had, in fact, been found innocent.  As of the Grace interview, no decision on guilt or innocence had ever been made.  The problem I have is that I think a lot of the criticism of Grace would go away if people perceived Duckett to be guilty.  Grace's tactics wouldn't have been perceived as too extreme against a guilty person.  So the question, then, comes down to Duckett's guilt or innocence, far more than to Grace's tactics per se.  This is why, I think, that the more appropriate legal option for this case would be for it to be tried as a case of slander (i.e. was Grace intentionally slandering Duckett on air by making statements about her that she had no legitimate reason in fact to believe).

In this case with Duckett, if Duckett was not guilty, then Duckett would have had the option of pursuing a slander case against Grace, and I'd have no problem with that (indeed, I hope that at some point someone does pursue a slander case).  If and/or when Grace actually slanders someone, she should be held accountable for that.  If Duckett's family thinks Duckett was innocent, then they should be pursuing a slander case, not this legally vague case based on emotional distress. That's my problem with this case - it could be clean and simple and based on law with precedent, but instead they're turning (just like that Myspace suicide case) to vaguely relevant law and trying to expand it to a whole new class of potential crimes.  That's how bad precedent gets made.  If what Grace is doing is deemed by the public to be unacceptable, then Congress and/or state legislatures should pass a law against that kind of reporting.  Then that law should get scrutinized by the courts to see if it meets first amendment requirements.  If it passes that level of scrutiny, then I would be fine with that - but I have serious issues when a law that was never intended for this purpose is stretched to try to censor someone's speech rights (even when, as I've said time and again in this thread, I find the speech itself to be quite reprehensible).

And yeah I know I could program my remote to scan in a custom order, but I am WAY to lazy to try to figure out how to do that.

Aren't we all...which is exactly why ESPN gets such a low number.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

I like a lot of those "true crime" shows, too - the staple of Bio, A&E, Discovery ID and Court...errr "TruTV". (Don't you just hate that tagline?)

I still flinch a bit at the c word myself sometimes, but as you said Grace appears from what I've seen (and like the masochist I am I watched some more this evening) to truly deserve the title. It was the first epithet that popped into my mind after watching less than 10 minutes of her shtick.

The lack of an "edit" function may be a limitation of the Scoop forum software TnT runs on, but even if it isn't there is a pretty strong cultural sentiment against it here because so many of us are Plastic refugees and that's the way it was over there. It prevents people from pulling down their past statements and then trying to claim they didn't make them, for one thing.

{Insert amusing quotation here}

That makes sense.  No denying your statements if you can't edit then out.

Yeah, I hate TruTv, ugh.  But I'm still a sucker for a story where the bad guys get caught, even though they always seem to be letting them out.

People like Nancy Grace sure do suck the fun out of it for me, though.  

"It was an ancient rule of Hawaiians that no one should hurt another bodily, or through theft of goods or through injury to feelings.These were the only sins."

As I remember it, Plastic didn't let you edit or remove comments either.  While an unlimited amount of time for editing comments would be a bad thing, a 1-2 minute period after posting a comment would be good.  It allows you to fix those errors you notice the moment you click post.  And at 1-2 minutes even the most outrageous comment would get little notice before being removed.

Some sites let you edit your comment until it has elicited a reply.

I confess to enjoying watching "Cops" and "America's Most Wanted".

Aw, now I have another one.

Cops is much better when you've been drinking. ;)

"It was an ancient rule of Hawaiians that no one should hurt another bodily, or through theft of goods or through injury to feelings.These were the only sins."

Heh. Is there any other way to watch it?

We used to play some way-too-complicated-to-fully-recall drinking game that involved waiting for the white guy with no shirt (more points/shots if he was barefoot, additional scoring if he had a mullet, and even more if he was apprehended in a trailer park) that seems to make a cameo in every episode.

{Insert amusing quotation here}

He was probably a stringer for the show.  

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

additional scoring if he had a mullet

Don't forget the mandatory chugging any time the suspect runs, is apprehended,  and  responds with I was scared! when the cop asks why'dja run?   (They never say 'why did you' it's always 'why'dja')

"It was an ancient rule of Hawaiians that no one should hurt another bodily, or through theft of goods or through injury to feelings.These were the only sins."

I'm still to this day waiting to see some wiseass come back with "Because I'm guilty as >bleep< and I didn't want your fat ass to catch me!"

{Insert amusing quotation here}

Actually, I almost want to watch cops sober now, after a couple of interesting run-ins my husband and I had with local cops, separately, that were remarkably similar.

In both instances they deliberately tried to provoke us, suspecting DUI, when we were on our way home from work and the airport respectively, and stone cold sober.  In both instances we responded with humor and they realized we were not impaired and sent us on our way, but when we compared notes we instantly realized why our local news has so many stories that end with the suspect became belligerent and was subdued by officers.  They do things to incite anger, giving them a reason to drag someone out of their car and search it, thereby causing someone to become  belligerent, and witnesses are none the wiser.

Gives me a whole new perspective on that I was scared thing.  Maybe those guys aren't as goofy as I've always thought.

"It was an ancient rule of Hawaiians that no one should hurt another bodily, or through theft of goods or through injury to feelings.These were the only sins."

...we instantly realized why our local news has so many stories that end with  the suspect became belligerent and was subdued by officers.  They do things to incite anger, giving them a reason to drag someone out of their car and search it, thereby causing someone to become  belligerent...

Yeah, with the rise of this new "paramilitary policing" that seems to have become all the rage (the shaved heads, the pump shotguns being replaced with M4 assault rifles in every cruiser, blah blah blah) it seems at least here locally that the default attitude upon approaching a vehicle - which used to be almost obsequious courtesy - is now active belligerence from word one.

I got pulled by one of our local Barney Fifes last week and it became clear over the course of the stop that he was convinced that my vehicle was stolen. Three separate trips back to his laptop, wanting to see the VIN in the windshield AND the one in the door, snapping the thumb break open on his holster as soon as he got out of the cruiser - all combined for a truly wonderful way to rob me of 15 minutes of my life. Plus I am a 40-something white guy who was (at least that day) dressed in decent-looking business casual. I can only imagine how it would have gone if I'd been black or brown or under 25.

{Insert amusing quotation here}

Plus I am a 40-something white guy who was (at least that day) dressed in decent-looking business casual. I can only imagine how it would have gone if I'd been black or brown or under 25.
Yup.  I'm 40 something and white, too, and had a child in the car with me.  The guy who had just buzzed around me doing at least 90 straight into the DUI checkpoint was sitting in his sports car by the side of the road already as I pulled up to it.    I saw the flares before he passed me, so it's hard to have any sympathy for anyone who would fly right into the checkpoint at that rate of speed.  I couldn't see what race any of the people were who were pulled over, but it's common for the people we see on the news to be people of color.

I don't think you even have to be truly drunk to respond with anger to the way they set things up, either.  Just one drink lowers your tolerance for bullshit enough to make it easy for them to engineer the situation to their advantage, and that's what they're counting on.    It's given me a whole new perspective about innocent until proven guilty, though.

"It was an ancient rule of Hawaiians that no one should hurt another bodily, or through theft of goods or through injury to feelings.These were the only sins."

My workshop is just over the fence from a house rented by a bunch of young white guys (I think they might be Marines, but I'm not sure) who watch Cops and Jerry Springer religiously.  And when one of their friends walks in, they always give a blow-by-blow synopsis.  It's a little bit surreal.