Scot Faulkner was the National Director of Personnel for the Reagan-Bush presidential Campaign of 1980. He went on to serve the Reagan Administration in executive positions at the Federal Aviation Administration, the General Services Administration, and the Peace Corps. He serves on the boards of numerous corporations and foundations and he’s the author of a bestselling book called Naked Emperors: The Failure of the Republican Revolution, published in 2007.

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I was talking last week about how the libel laws in England prevent journalists from working, and keep stories about the rich and powerful under wraps. That doesn’t happen much in the US.

As I mentioned last week, the US follows a 1964 precedent called New York Times v O’Sullivan, from a libel case taken by Montgomery police commissioner LB Sullivan who said that some inaccuracies in a piece about the policing of civil rights demonstrations in Alabama libeled him.

In the UK he would have been certain of a

win and probably a big payout, but the Supreme Court agreed with the New York

Times that they are going to make some honest mistakes from time to time and if

that could put them out of business, that would effectively restrain their free

expression.

They ruled that proving the facts is not

enough to sue. You must prove the journalist knew, or should have known the

truth and maliciously or recklessly wrote something false anyway. Basically you

have to prove what was in their mind, an almost impossible task.

That’s why there is no big libel business

in the US. But someone did win a libel case recently. His name is Leonard

Pozner, he’s the father of Noah Pozner who was murdered at the age of six years

in the Sandy Hook school shooting. The court

ruled that James Fetzer,