The Editor’s Letter in the October issue of Vanity Fair focuses on a recent libel suit the magazine faced in the U.K. The plaintiff? The infamous film director Roman Polanski.
Polanski accused the magazine of defaming his name in a 2002 story. According to the article, Polanski propositioned a model at a famous New York City restaurant shortly after the death of his wife, Sharon Tate, back in 1969. Polanski denies this ever happened and sought monetary damages. Keep in mind, Polanski currently lives in France because the U.S. would like to put him on trial for a crime he allegedly committed here over 20 years ago.
Graydon Carter’s three-page note to readers provides the British perspective on law, libel and how it all played out. Under British law, the burden of proof is on the defendant; Vanity Fair had to prove that the story was true in order to win the case. Their key witness was the man who claims to have seen the event take place, Harper’s Magazine editor, Lewis Lapham.
Based on a reading of the article, the American system would’ve made it far more difficult to prove that Vanity Fair committed the offense or published the article to cause damage to Polanski.
Nevertheless, would you print something about an event that supposedly happened decades ago even if it comes from a reliable source? In this instance, I probably would have. Lapham is still a prominent member of the journalistic community, and if he recalled the evening as well as Carter claims, there seems no reason not to use it.
Was the British system biased against Vanity Fair ? I don’t think it was biased (who says the burden of proof has to be on the plaintiff?), but it certainly sets a high standard. Even with all of your i’s dotted, it appears a media organization is much more susceptible to litigation. Journalism practiced in the U.K. might be more of an extreme sport than it is in the U.S.
A pat on the back to Carter for standing by his magazine. He believes that there was nothing libelous about the story, that the evidence showed that the story was true, and he was willing to publicly defend it. He was ultimately unsuccessful, but he showed moxie. Rather than compromising and settling quietly out of court, he honorably put up a fight.
willemmarx @ September 22, 2005 - 7:52am
My mother used to play backgammon with Polanski, Nicholson et al, and says Roman was a dirty man who creeped out every girl at a party. I like Lapham, and believe he is one of the rare journalists with integrity at the top of the profession. A magazine in the UK which is constantly under fire for supposedly libellous statements is Private Eye (though the online version is pretty scanty), which unfortunately doesn't have the deep pockets of Vanity Fair's publisher Conde Nast International. So a pat on the back for Graydon, but surely it is the execs at CNI who are deserving of praise, since they didn't back down from some potentially costly litigation and stood by their editor. Something which in the UK at least has become increasingly rare, with the dismissal of senior Editors such as Piers Morgan of the Mirror recently.
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