Sean Kent

They can make innocent mistakes if they're in the effort of trying to provide the truth.

And they came up with an actual malice standard because they didn't want to chill the right of a journalist to try to report on things.

They wanted to give journalists a good faith, attaboy, you're trying to do the right thing.

So they created an actual malice standard.

They said if a journalist is...

actively trying to hurt somebody, if a person is actively trying to hurt someone who is a public figure, then you can file your lawsuit.

Then you can go after them.

They made that an element of something that needed to be proven.

So what our Supreme Court in the United States has basically said is journalists have a right of journalist freedom because they have to dig.

They have to try.

They have to try to get that story so that the public can hear it.

But every now and then you do have to answer your question.

You do have a crappy journalist who doesn't do their homework, doesn't do it the right way, doesn't do things.

Should they be sued necessarily?

No, but they still can get fired.

They still can be blackballed.

They can still say you're a bad journalist.

But getting to the level that you should be sued and cost money, you have to crush that threshold that what you are doing is done with actual malice.

To go back to the Candace issue.

What they're having to prove in that case is Candace may be, and I'm saying may, may be a bad person.