By Robin Guess
July 16, 2024
Credits @FFHR.CZ
When Mississippi Today journalist Anna Wolfe won a Pulitzer in 2023 for investigating millions in misspent federal welfare funds, colleagues at her small online news organization were overjoyed.
Her five-part series, “The Backchannel,” chronicled the roles played by former Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant, NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre and a long list of others in the $77 million welfare scandal that shook the poorest state in the U.S.
Fast forward one year and Mississippi Today and Wolfe are buried in enough legal fees to put the news organization in an existential fight for its life. That’s because former Gov. Bryant is suing for defamation and false light — not because he challenges the veracity of the five-part series, but the way Wolfe and some of her colleagues discussed it at various public-facing events.
No criminal charges have been filed against Bryant, who informed Mississippi’s state auditor in 2019 about possible misspending of money from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families antipoverty program.
However, free-press advocates such as International Press Institute say the suit has gone too far. A recent court order that would force Wolfe to reveal her sources has been stayed, pending an appeal.
“I think that anytime a public official tries to use a lawsuit against a small newsroom like ours — [one] that has limited time, manpower and financial resources — it’s a big deal,” said Adam Ganucheau, Mississippi Today’s editor-in-chief.
Ganucheau says ex-Gov. Bryant has failed to prove their stories inaccurate but has launched the suit in retaliation for their reporting, weaponizing the law to bully the small news organization into revealing confidential sources.
“We have this fear that public officials can file these lawsuits against small news organizations like ours, and even if they don’t prevail in the end in the courtroom, they still can hurt us in other ways,” Ganucheau told VOA.
Bryant's legal team rejected that criticism, insisting their suit has nothing to do with political retribution.
“It’s not about retaliating,” William Quin, Bryant’s attorney, told VOA. “It’s about vindicating Governor Bryant’s right, just like any other citizen of this state, or this country, can do if they were defamed. That’s what the suit is and it will either rise or fall on its merit.”
Some media law experts have expressed concern over what appears to be an emerging trend of media-directed SLAPP suits by U.S. government entities and politicians. A common tactic used to crack down on media in Russia, Myanmar and Brazil, Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) are costly baseless lawsuits filed to intimidate and silence criticism.
In the United States, at least 33 states have now adopted so-called “anti-SLAPP” laws enabling courts to dismiss meritless suits that would silence criticism on matters of public interest.
Experts tell VOA they are seeing a trend of retaliation against media including through some U.S. government entities and politicians who use denial of access to conferences or events, gag orders, subpoenas and withholding of public records.
Since its 2017 founding, the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a coalition of media rights organizations, has documented hundreds of cases of journalists receiving subpoenas or legal orders, information-access denials and legal threats.
“We are seeing a number of disturbing trends in terms of retaliation against journalists,” said Heather Murray, managing attorney at Cornell Law School’s First Amendment Clinic.
“News outlets on their own don’t have the funds to mount these fights,” she said of many media-retaliation cases in the U.S, particularly those involving smaller outlets. “In the past couple of weeks alone, we filed two public-records related suits.”
The Free Expression Legal Network — a coalition of 32 university law clinics, many of which devote their efforts to defending press freedom and free speech issues for under-resourced news organizations and financially strapped journalists — takes on many of these lawsuits.
In its 2022 legal survey of what types of legal matters or cases their members were spending their time on, they answered 78% on public records, 70% on defamation and libel and court access.
Earlier this year, the city of Los Angeles hit freelance documentary photojournalist Ben Camacho with two separate lawsuits for his publication of hundreds of police records and photos that the city was forced to release to him after it lost a public records battle.
“I think it sends a bad message that a city attorney or a city in general can sue a reporter on very, very weak grounds, and go against decades of press freedom law and the First Amendment,” Camacho told VOA. “I think that’s an extremely irresponsible way of governing. And an abuse of their official capacity.”
Although Los Angeles lost both suits against Camacho and has assumed responsibility for his $300,000 legal fees, experts like UC Irvine law professor Susan Seager, who represented Camacho, say the retaliatory suits still have a chilling effect on small news organizations, independent journalists and freelancers in particular.
“This is a huge and grave constitutional concern,” said Seager, who runs the law school’s Press Freedom Project. “They want to use the courts, and they weaponize the laws.”
The 14-month ordeal was devastatingly stressful for Camacho, says Seager.
“It’s very scary to have the full weight of the City of Los Angeles file a lawsuit against you,” Seager told VOA. “We were able to win dismissal of both those cases. But it was very stressful to Mr. Camacho. And the city now has to pay our attorneys’ fees, and they basically admitted what they did was wrong because they had to dismiss their case.”
Mississippi Today’s legal fees so far have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the former governor has asked for an additional $1 million in damages.
For Mississippi Today, the time, energy and money consumed by the legal fight has already exacted among the highest possible tolls: their diminished ability to report on other important stories, according to Ganucheau.
Source: voanews.com
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