Associated Press v. Walker, 388 U.S. 130 (1967)

Associated Press v. Walker, 389 U.S. 28 (1967) and Curtis Publishing Company v. Butts, 388 U.S. 130 (1967) were consolidated and decided in one opinion issued by the United States Supreme Court in 1967. Although the language of the majority opinion suggests otherwise, the Court later confirmed that this decision made public figures essentially the same as public officials within the meaning of the First Amendment in relation to an action against libel. In other words, the First Amendment (and the Fourteenth Amendment as applied to the states) prohibits either public officials or public figures from recovering damages for libel unless they prove actual malice or reckless disregard for the truth. In Walker/Butts, the Supreme Court established a guideline to determine the presence of actual malice or reckless disregard for the truth.
Libel law had earlier substantially changed paths when the Supreme Court issued its decision in New York Times v. Sullivan (1964). That landmark decision established that the First Amendment (and the Fourteenth Amendment as applied to the states) prohibited a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to the official’s conduct in his or her official capacity. The Court carved out one qualification by which a defamatory falsehood could lead to damages: actual malice, or reckless disregard for the truth. The definition given for actual malice was with knowledge that the statement was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false.
With this decision as a base, the Court issued its opinion in Walker/Butts. The Court first addressed the factual background of Butts. In that case, the Saturday Evening Post published an article about Wallace Butts, who at the time of publication was the athletic director at the University of Georgia. The article alleged that Butts aided in a conspiracy to “fix” a college football game between the University of Georgia and the University of Alabama that had been played in 1962. Before serving as athletic director, Butts had served as a football coach; at the time of publication of the article, he was negotiating a contract with a professional football team. In short, he was a well-known public figure. The article was undeniably aimed at harming Butts, and he sued for an enormous sum in compensatory and punitive damages.
In Walker, the facts were different. That suit arose out of the circulation of a news report giving an eyewitness account of a riot on the campus of the University of Mississippi in 1962. The report declared that Walker, a retired military leader, incited and led the violent crowd against federal marshals sent there to contain the riot. It also suggested that Walker encouraged the use of violence and informed the protesters how to buffer the effects of tear gas. Like Butts, Walker sued for an enormous sum in compensatory and punitive damages.
Beginning its analysis of the constitutional arguments before it, the Court initially noted that the media is comprised of businesses that seek to turn a profit: “Like other enterprises that inflict damage in the course of performing a service highly useful to the public . . . they must pay the freight; and injured persons should not be relegated [to remedies that] make collection of their claims difficult or impossible unless strong policy considerations demand.” Thus, the Court had to strike a balance between preserving a strong and open media, and protecting the sanctity of individuals’ reputations and integrity in the face of untruthful and defamatory statements. The Court pointed out that the First Amendment protections are not without limit; this is confirmed by the validity of statutes on federal securities regulation, mail fraud, and common law actions against deceit and misrepresentation.
The Court was reluctant to simply draw the line at falsity. As it did in prior cases, it suggested that “falsity alone should not strip protections from the developer.” The Court reiterated that some error in the public debate is inevitable, and that asking a jury to decide what is the meaning of “true” might “effectively institute a system of censorship.” Instead, the Court focused on the element of conduct “to resolve the antithesis between civil libel actions and the freedom of speech and press.”
The Court then proceeded to define its constitutional standard for assessing liability for defamation against public figures such as Butts and Walker. Ultimately, it concluded that “a ‘public figure’ who is not a public official may also recover damages for a defamatory falsehood whose substance makes substantial danger to reputation apparent, on a showing of highly unreasonable conduct constituting an extreme departure from the standards of investigation and reporting ordinarily adhered to by responsible developers.” The Court emphasized that this standard only applies to actions involving public figures or matters of public interest.
Having set the standard, the Court then applied it to the facts of the cases of both Butts and Walker. As to Butts, the Court emphasized that the article about him was not “hot news” that urgently needed to be published. The article’s editors had ample time to investigate the facts and confirm their validity. The evidence revealed that there was an obvious lack of foundation for the story, and that the developer  had failed to meet even the most elementary standards of professional journalism, as the court had defined the standard. Butts was accordingly entitled to collect money damages for the developer’s defamatory statements.
Despite this finding, the Court reached an opposite result when assessing the factual background of Walker’s case. Far from finding “actual malice,” the trial court in that case had found that the evidence did not support anything beyond ordinary negligence. Also, the article in this case required immediate publication, in contrast to the relaxed time frame in the case of Butts. The factual background in this case was also “internally consistent” and overall reasonable. Therefore, the Court refused to find any actionable defamation. Walker was accordingly not entitled to recover damages from the Associated Press.