Footnotes

1. Paul McMasters, Libel: Subtle Censor of the Press, freedomforum.org, Jan. 4, 1999, cited in Roundtable: First Amendment on Trial — The Libel Lawyer's Perspective, 23 Seattle Univ. L.R. 849, 849-850 (2000).

2. Generally, speech from the broadcast medium that is part of a script is termed libel.

3. Rosenblatt v. Baer, 338 U.S. 75, 92 (J. Stewart, concurring).

4. Id. at 95 (J. Black, concurring in part and dissenting in part). Black wrote:

The only sure way to protect speech and press against these threats is to recognize that libel laws are abridgments of speech and press and therefore are barred in both federal and state courts by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. I repeat what I said in the New York Times case that 'An unconditional right to say what one pleases about public affairs is what I consider to be the minimum guarantee of the First Amendment.'")

5. Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 571-572 (1942):

There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which has never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or 'fighting' words - those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.

6. Robert Wagman, The First Amendment Book (New York: Scripp Howards, 1991), 144.

7. John Nowak & Ronald Rotunda, Constitutional Law (5th ed) at d 16.3(b).

8. Al Knight, The Life of the Law (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1996), p. 106.

9. Leonard Levy, Emergence of a Free Press (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 16.

10. Rex Heinke, Media Law at d 2.1.

11. 376 U.S. 254 (1964).

12. Id. at 264.

13. Id. at 269.

14. Id. at 270.

15. Id. at 279-280.

16. 388 U.S. 130 (1967).

17. 418 U.S. 323 (1974).

18. 403 U.S. 29 (1971).

19. 418 U.S. at 347.

20. Id. at 351.

21. Caveat: Expressions of opinion can imply an assertion of objective facts. See Milkovich v. Lorain Journal, 497 U.S. 1 (1990)).