Murder the Truth: Threats, Intimidation, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful

New York Times editor Enrich (Servants of the Damned) offers a chilling deep dive into “a largely under-the-radar legal movement that is weaponizing [an] obscure field of libel law.” Ever since the Supreme Court’s unanimous 1964 decision in New York Times Company v. Sullivan, plaintiffs classified as public figures have been required to prove that individuals or entities they sue for libel acted with “knowledge that [the information] was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” The impact of that ruling, Enrich explains, was to allow journalists to “investigate and write about those in the public sphere, even if they accidentally got a fact wrong.” But in recent years Sullivan has come under attack as libel suits have been brought, or threatened, against newspapers, both local and national, in a concerted right-wing effort to give a conservative Supreme Court an opportunity to overrule Sullivan, according to Enrich. He profiles those caught up in the lawsuits, including Colorado journalist Conrad Swanson, whose investigation into public safety concerns about a new residential development were stymied when his newspaper was threatened with a libel action, as well as those pursuing Sullivan’s demise—like billionaire Peter Thiel, who covertly financed a libel lawsuit against Gawker that led to the website’s shuttering, and the growing “clique of high-powered lawyers who... specialize in attacking journalists” on behalf of the powerful. It’s an unsettling look at a dire threat to democracy. (Mar.)