Posted on Tue, May. 13, 2008

CNN's adventure into "citizen journalism" ("CNN risking soul with iReport.com," May 6 Opinion), a Web site called iReport.com, does more than risk that news organization's honor. It could cost it a bundle.

Having spent 43 years in journalism, I am hardly a fan of libel lawsuits, but in the occasional clear case, damage done to someone's good name requires compensation. I also learned, painfully, that even a frivolous libel suit that goes nowhere can command a lot of your money and attention while it is being disposed of.

The nature of the Web is that anybody can communicate with everyone in the world at virtually no cost. Search sites have provided us with the ability to extract instantly, from millions of Web sites, information (or assertions or guesses or speculations or lies) about anyone and anything.

What a marvel and blessing. Until, that is, someone says something untrue and damaging about you or your business, as in the hypothetical sign posting in my column last week.

CNN's iReport.com will encourage ordinary citizens to post -- unchecked or otherwise vetted by anyone -- what they think are news stories. It's a sure bet that anger or carelessness or malevolence will lead to clear instances of libel. And those libels will bear the imprimatur of CNN, "the most trusted name in news."

CNN's culpability is real, despite the fact that CNN declares that it is not responsible.

Why is it not responsible?

Because it so declares, that's why.

Most reasonable people -- such as, for instance, those who serve on juries -- would say, "Of course CNN should be held responsible when it provides and heavily promotes the Web site in order to make money."

But CNN and other news organizations dealing in what's now called citizen journalism are able to rely legally, though clearly not morally, on a section of the 1996 Communications Decency Act that seems to exempt Web site providers from libels committed by content providers, including citizen journalists.

Section 230 was written to help early development of the Web. The idea, pushed by Web pioneers and early site developers, was that unfettered freedom was essential to its growth.

That was, of course, years before people figured out how to make billions of dollars exploiting that freedom.

The policy question, now that the Web is developed and is generating huge profits for relatively little overhead, is whether depriving people of recourse when they are harmed continues to be justifiable.

If someone damages your name or business with material on the Web, you can try to sue him, provided you can find out who he is and why (essential to proving libel) he did you in. Then, if you win, you can only hope that he can pay the judgment.

But under present law, you cannot sue the Web site itself, which is making money by participating in ruining your good name, and that is a license for recklessness.

Dozens, if not hundreds, of libel cases are bubbling through state and federal courts, and the outcomes are wildly variable. It will take years for the legal system to establish reliable precedents, and we really shouldn't ask the courts to decide such policy matters.

Given the changed environment, Congress should rewrite Section 230 to ensure that both the originator and the enabler of libels can be held responsible.

Davis Merritt is a former editor of The Eagle. Reach him at dmerritt9@cox.net.