A Closer Look At The FWST Editorial On The HB 129 Debate

I’m alternately heartened and saddened by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s editorial this morning about the debate over Vicki Truitt’s HB 129, the “blog libel bill.”

First, let’s look at the first few paragraphs:

The cyberspace firestorm of hate unleashed on state Rep. Vicki Truitt of Keller over her bill targeting defamatory statements on Internet Web sites seems to have calmed after she said she would revise the bill’s language.

The mostly anonymous criticism from bloggers — a mixture of bombast, crude humor and frenzied groupthink — was largely as meaningless as most of the bill itself. Libel printed on the Internet already can trigger a lawsuit, just as it can in any print media.

I would strongly dispute the use of the term “firestorm of hate.” For one thing, while there was a significant amount of criticism of Truitt, I don’t think that even 1 percent of it could be considered hateful. At least, not from mainstream bloggers. People writing on message boards and outside of blogs is another matter, but by and large, while some bloggers may have been snarky and some may have used pardoy in their criticism, it wasn’t hateful.

Furthermore, most of it wasn’t anonomous. The vast majority of it, in fact, took place on widely recognized Texas blogs that are listed on the sidbar of this blog. Other criticism came from blogs and bloggers that aren’t anonomous either.

As for this statement, “Libel printed on the Internet already can trigger a lawsuit, just as it can in any print media,” bloggers critical of the bill already made that point time and time again.

Next, consider this:

Truitt says that’s not what she intended to address in her bill anyway (she wanted to stop people from exposing others to identity theft by posting their personal information online), so she’ll revise and narrow the bill’s language. Still, Dan Sutherland, Truitt’s legislative director, described the fast-and-furious negative reaction to the bill on the blogosphere as “amazing.”

And one part of that reaction truly hit home. (Hint to bloggers: It wasn’t the “big hair” or body-parts insults aimed at Truitt.)

It came from Grand Saline resident Vince Leibowitz, who comments on Texas politics through his CapitolAnnex.com blog. Leibowitz pointed out a part of the state’s libel law written in 1985 that should be changed for the Internet era and beyond.

The law specifically protects “a newspaper or other periodical” from being sued for libel when reporting on things that happen in a court of law, the proceedings of a government body or meetings dealing with public issues.

The protection also extends to “reasonable and fair comment on or criticism of an official act of a public official or other matter of public concern for general information.”

One way to look at it is that the Star-Telegram is specifically protected by state law when it criticizes Truitt for her official acts, but Internet bloggers are not. That’s not good. We’re both doing the same thing, and we both deserve the same protection for fair reporting and comment.

In this instance, I could not agree more with the Star-Telegram. We need this protection and are already taking action to see if we can get this protection during the 80th.

More:

The Texas Legislature — perhaps even led by Truitt, since she has partly plowed this ground already — should change state libel law so that fair reporting and comment about the acts of public officials are protected, no matter the medium of their publication.

Many bloggers really should clean up their acts, but their unfettered comments still can serve the public good.

I will admit that my critique of Truitt’s bill was more tame than some of my colleagues, but I 100% defend their right to write what they see fit. If the Star-Telegram’s editorial board read enough of the content of the blogs it is critical of in this instance to realize that their criticism fit within the stylistic scope of their previous writing, their target audience, and their blog, perhaps they wouldn’t make this criticism.

I’ll make this deal with the Star-T, though: I’ll ask my colleagues to “clean up their act,” when the mainstream media gets Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh to clean up theirs.

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