COMM 201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Federal Communications Commission, Insider Trading, Actual Malice
4 Apr 2017
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Public relations personnel must be aware that they can be held legally liable if they provide advice or tacitly support an illegal activity of a client or employer. This area of liability is called conspiracy. A written falsehood is libel; a spoken falsehood is slander. Both are called defamation by the courts. Private citizens tend to have more success winning defamation suits than do public figures: with public figures, there is the extra test of whether the libelous statements were made with actual malice. A person filing a libel suit must prove that: the false statement was communicated to others, the person is identifiable, there was actual injury, the statement was malicious or negligent. Avoiding libel suits: opinion statements must be accompanied by the facts, clearly label statements of opinion, review context of opinion for possible legal implications. Public relations staff must be particularly sensitive to the issue of privacy.
