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WASHINGTON, Feb. 27 (UPI) -- A high-profile defamation suit by a former U.S. Department of Agriculture official against a prominent conservative blogger may test the role of libel laws in the brave new world of the Internet, as one newspaper writer suggests. Or it may be just an opportunity to reinforce the notion, shocking and strange as it may seem, that bloggers should actually be held legally accountable for the truth of what they say -- like trained journalists.
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The case in the District of Columbia Superior Court involves former USDA official Shirley Sherrod and conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, who posted a video online purporting to show Sherrod's prejudice against whites as she addressed the NAACP in Atlanta.
Sherrod was forced out of her job, but the NAACP released a full video of the speech showing the portion posted online was taken out of context. Sherrod was actually making the case that all people need to be helped, regardless of color.
Breitbart was served papers in the lawsuit while attending the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington early in February.
As the controversy developed, syndicated columnist Clarence Page -- a senior member of the Chicago Tribune editorial board -- hilariously wrote: "Shirley Sherrod's lawsuit against Andrew Breitbart reads like Little Nell taking on Snidely Whiplash. That is, unless you're hearing about the case in conservative media. There Little Nell grows fangs and bites poor Snidely while he's saving the world from government bloodsuckers."
Be that as it may, the conservative Washington Times laid out the case objectively last week.
Times writer Ben Conery recounted how the suit stems from Breitbart posting a video clip online of Sherrod, who is black and was at the time the U.S. Agriculture Department's director of rural development for Georgia.
The video shows Sherrod giving a speech to the NAACP, and talking about her own mixed feelings about helping a white farmer retain his farm.
The video ignited a firestorm, with conservatives saying it showed racism on the part of a black official.
But when the NAACP released the full video, it was apparent that Sherrod was talking about an incident that took place more than 20 years before. The thrust of the entire story Sherrod told was that she had overcome her prejudice and was able to help the white farmer, and that officials should help all farmers, regardless of color.
Sherrod's vindication did not come soon enough; she was forced out of her USDA job by Obama administration officials, who ignored her pleas for a fuller hearing. However, once it became clear that she had been misrepresented, the administration offered her a higher-ranking position she declined.
The Times article said Sherrod's suit claims Breitbart posted the video clip to demonstrate alleged NAACP racism because he was angry the group had charged the Tea Party with racism.
For his part, Breitbart said he would not be "silenced" and was confident he will be vindicated, suggesting the Sherrod suit was filed in retaliation for his exposing alleged fraud in the reparations paid to black farmers and Sherrod's purported part in that alleged fraud, the Times said.
The Times' Conery said Sherrod's lawsuit "promises to test the application of traditional libel laws in an emerging media landscape in which blogs and social networking Web sites have taken the place of newspapers and television broadcasts. Media and legal observers say the case bears watching because of that, but largely will hinge on well-established law and precedent despite its high-tech setting."
The syndicated Page had his own take on the importance of the case. The online headline over his column in the Bowling Green (Ky.) Daily News read: "Lawsuit between Sherrod, Breitbart might make bloggers actually do their homework."
"Having known and followed Breitbart for several years, I have not known him to have serious doubt about much of anything that he ever does, even when I happen to think he's dead wrong," Page wrote. "Should bloggers be held to lower expectations of accountability than those of us who toil in the old-school mainstream media? Questions like that could make this a landmark case, if it gets to trial."
Vanderbilt University's First Amendment Center, in a 2007 posting, pointed out defamation suits over online statements are nothing new.
"According to an October 2006 USA Today article, more than 50 libel lawsuits have been filed over the past two years stemming from online postings," the center said. "Libel lawsuits have been leveled against individuals, both known and anonymous; against the bloggers who let others post comments on their blogs; and against employees by their employers over comments or items posted on a blog.
"A lawsuit over an alleged libel that happened to occur online would proceed like any other libel action ... if the accused were known and named," the center said.
Every journalism school student learns the holy trinity of libel defense -- truth, privileged communications, and fair comment and criticism.
Even bloggers can tell the truth, and when they do they haven't committed libel. Statements made in court or in a legislative body such as Congress have absolute privilege: No matter how cockamamie they sound, such statements still aren't libel, and reporting them isn't libel.
Fair comment and criticism is perhaps the broadest defense. It applies to statements made about public figures but even these statements have their limits. Reporters still can't defame even a public figure. Comment has to be fair and criticism has to be obviously couched as opinion.
There are other defenses to libel but the big three are the main ones. The don't, however, exist in a vacuum.
The U.S. Supreme Court defined and refined "malice" as a factor in its famous 1964 ruling, The New York Times Co. vs. Sullivan.
In that case, a unanimous court said under the First and 14th amendments, a state court cannot award damages to a public official for a "defamatory falsehood" relating to official conduct, "unless he proves 'actual malice' -- that the statement was made with knowledge of its falsity or with reckless disregard of whether it was true or false."
That's a pretty high hurdle to jump, one that Sherrod, who was certainly a public official when Breitbart posted his video, will have to overcome in her suit.
Even more stark than Justice William Brennan's opinion in The New York Times case were the separate concurring opinions written by Justices Arthur Goldberg and Hugo Black, joined by Justice William O. Douglas.
"I strongly believe that the Constitution accords citizens and press an unconditional freedom to criticize official conduct," Goldberg said.
Black added: "An unconditional right to say what one pleases about public affairs is what I consider to be the minimum guarantee of the First Amendment."
