Defamation reforms, alarming to news business, on verge of failure in FL Legislature

Chamber of the Florida House of Representatives. Credit: Imani Thomas

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The House and Senate sponsors of legislation to tighten Florida’s defamation law against media organizations conceded Tuesday that the measure is falling short as the regular session winds to a close.

“Dead,” Republican Sen. Jason Brodeur said when asked about the bill’s prospects.

Brodeur, representing Seminole and part of Orange counties, added a caveat: “As far as I know. But that’s going to be up to the presiding officer” — meaning Senate President Kathleen Passidomo.

State Rep. Alex Andrade. Credit: FL House of Representatives.

The House sponsor, Alex Andrade, a Republican whose district include parts of Escambia and Santa Rosa counties, also acknowledged the writing on the wall.

“President Passidomo doesn’t want to hear it. It depends on how much anybody else cares about it. Like, I don’t negotiate with President Passidomo,” Andrade told the Phoenix.

Additionally, “the speaker [of the House, Paul Renner] doesn’t want it. The governor doesn’t have the bandwidth to negotiate for it,” he added. “There’s nothing to trade, nothing to negotiate on. President Passidomo is going to kill it.”

The legislation got farther through the House process than in the Senate; it’s ready for the House floor should the leadership’s priorities change, but the Senate version, having passed in the Judiciary Committee, has stalled in Fiscal Policy.

“When a bill is stuck in a Senate Committee, the Senate cannot take up the House Bill on the floor without waiving the rules,” Senate spokesperson Katie Betta told the Phoenix by email.

That would require cooperation from Passidomo — who, Betta said, hasn’t taken a position on the legislation — “not at this time,” as Betta put it.

Similar legislation failed last year, notwithstanding support from Gov. Ron DeSantis, who makes a habit of criticizing “corporate media.”

‘Veracity’ hearings

Andrade’s bill (HB 757) would allow publishers to mitigate any damages by posting retractions.

Plaintiffs could file suit in any county in which the material broadcast by radio or television or posted on the internet was viewable.

Once a complaint is filed, courts would have 60 days to conduct “veracity” hearings testing whether the challenged material was an assertion of fact or opinion; whether it was true or false; whether it was defamatory; whether the subject of the material was a public figure; and whether the publication acted “negligently, recklessly, intentionally, or with actual malice.”

“If a public figure plaintiff can establish that a published statement is false and that the publisher relied on an anonymous source for the statement, there is a rebuttable presumption that the publisher acted with actual malice in publishing the statement,” the bill says.

Publishers would be liable for using artificial intelligence to place people in a false light that would be “highly offensive to a reasonable person” and “had knowledge of or acted in reckless disregard as to the false implications of the media.”

The stinger, perhaps, is that language on anonymous sources. It alarmed news publishers but also conservative sources and brought a denunciation from Steven Miller, the Donald Trump aide, who posted on X, “If Florida passes the proposed law to lower the standard for defamation expect leftist’ plaintiffs lawyers to spend the next generation bankrupting every prominent conservative based in Florida.”

Misgivings

Other publishers and free-speech advocates also expressed qualms.

“This legislation will harm freedom of expression and freedom of the press in the state of Florida, even with the amendment,” Greg Gonzales of the nonpartisan Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression testified during a House committee hearing, by making it “more difficult to weed out defamation claims designed to silence and muzzle critics.”

The stinger, perhaps, is language creating a rebuttable presumption that a publisher “acted with actual malice” if citing one anonymous source.

That alarmed conservative publishers and brought a denunciation from Steven Miller, the Donald Trump aide, who posted on X, “If Florida passes the proposed law to lower the standard for defamation expect leftist’ plaintiffs lawyers to spend the next generation bankrupting every prominent conservative based in Florida.”

Legitimate news organizations would have nothing to fear, Andrade insisted.

“Every case that’s ever taken up the question whether or not a false statement published based on a single anonymous source satisfied actual malice said yes. Why shouldn’t we as a state codify that, clarify that, when every case agrees with that?”

Doing that, Andrade said, constitutes “journalistic malpractice.”

The Senate version (SB 1780) is similar but lacks the veracity hearings and includes a cause of action for using artificial intelligence to cast somebody in a false light.

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