DES MOINES – In ruling last week, the Iowa Supreme Court declined to broaden to regular citizens protections enjoyed my the media against libel lawsuits.
In comparing a regular citizen using social media to the actual media, the court said “as compared to a generation ago, nonmedia defendants may have a greater capacity for harm without corresponding reasons to be accurate in what they are saying. This is a justification for retaining our media/nonmedia distinction” and allowing libel lawsuits against individuals in Iowa courts.
However, in the ruling, the court granted libel lawsuit protections to companies that publish information on the internet. “We do not believe the concept of a media defendant encompasses only businesses that report news,” the court stated on page 39 of its ruling.
University of Iowa journalism professor Lyombe Eko told the Des Moines Register that the court “has given protection to people who are bullied on the Internet, the victims of smears or lies or accusations posted on Facebook and Twitter.”
The Register also reported that media lawyers said the decision modernized Iowa’s libel law by extending free-speech protections to Internet publishers.
A notable quote the justices used in their ruling was: “The editor of a newspaper has the right, if not the duty, of publishing, for the information of the public, fair and reasonable comments, however severe in terms, upon anything which is made by its owner a subject of public exhibition, as upon any other matter of public interest; and such a publication falls within the class of privileged communications, for which no action will lie without proof of actual malice.” Cherry v. Des Moines Leader, 114 Iowa 298, 304, 86 N.W. 323, 325 (1901)
