Saturday, October 25, 2008

Pensacola: Florida papers win big high court ruling

Led by the Pensacola News Journal, Florida newspapers have won an important legal victory protecting them from lawsuits challenging accurate reporting that might cast someone in a bad light.

From a story yesterday in the Tallahassee Democrat: "The Florida Supreme Court, in a pair of rulings, said libel and defamation lawsuits offer enough protection and refused to recognize false-light invasion of privacy as grounds to sue. The decisions served to uphold a lower-court ruling that tossed out an $18.3 million judgment against the Pensacola News Journal and its parent company, Gannett.''

Ivey, and Corporate politics
Wasn't this the lawsuit that landed then-Publisher Denise Ivey in Corporate's doghouse, before she was briefly liberated by now-retired newspaper division chief Sue Clark-Johnson? Ivey, publisher of The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., is reportedly now back in Pensacola as a consultant -- a victim of June's Friday Afternoon Massacre.

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2 comments:

  1. Calling this ruling a victory for Gannett or newspapers is putting lipstick on a pig. Everybody involved in this case knows it was simply about sloppy editing. It has been an expensive exercise for Gannett that could've been avoided completely with a better editor.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'll second that.

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