New York Times v. Murray Energy Corporation

Libel and slander, both forms of defamation, are becoming harder and harder to file lawsuits against. However, if proven, can be very detrimental to the reputation of the one committing the libel since it would hurt their reliability. Libel is anything written that is intended to hurt the reputation of a person or organization. New York Times v. Sullivan set up the framework for establishing libel in media. Since then, many people have sued organizations and each other. In the court case Murray Energy Corporation v. New York Times, the energy company is claiming the newspaper published a libelous article about a mine collapse. The New York Times article talked about the influence of money in which they mentioned the coal industry. Murray Energy claims that the paper intentionally published false information in the article stating that a mine collapse killing nine people was due to the company not following regulations. The energy company pushed back saying the the collapse was caused by an earthquake. There are two reasons the company is filling a lawsuit. For one, the company believes the article hurt their reputation. Two, they believe the article was published to promote a left wing agenda that would put the industry out of business. So how does this case represent the constraints on free speech for the news industry? Well there are actually many forms of speech that are not protected by the First Amendment. According to the First Amendment Center, there are about eleven different types of speech that are not protected, and libel happens to be one of them. While a new organization might have the right to publish what they want, they must face the consequences if it’s considered libel. 

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/which-types-of-speech-are-not-protected-by-the-first-amendment/