| Speaking in general terms it was always easy to get any print to say any
injurious thing about a citizen in a newspaper, but it was next to impossible
to get that paper or any other to right an injured man. We have a law of
libel, but it is inoperative and merely cumbers the statute books. For several
reasons: First -- The case must take its routine place in the calendar
of the court and that ensures that some months must elapse before the courts
get down to it, so that whatever injury the libel might do has been already
done. Second -- A jury is afraid of the newspapers and always lets
a newspaper off at the cheapest and easiest rate. As the result libel suits
are very uncommon and whenever one is tried it simply serves as a reminder
to later comers that the best way is to let libel suits alone and take what
the newspapers choose to give you in the way of abuse. - "About General Grant's Memoirs," Autobiography of Mark Twain (University of California Press, 2010) |
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