OK so the key element was acting with malice— got that. But how about a media that materially altered publicly available tapes to influence justice and a locally selected jury. This would be.. what? Not malice, but they first said they didn’t alter then they did— so perjury.
Gotta say that Z is not without flaw, but a citizen is due fair treatment. How different is this than if by some cultural reversal NBC “edited” the facts of a black on white shooting (which all media has been suppressing reportage of, for sometime). This is a litmus strip test of what is happening in the “ruling” media elites and their “consensus” agenda that is NOT the law or the facts. For tv ratings?
Courts love to redefine the meaning of ordinary words. This is the legal definition of "actual malice" in defamation cases where a public figure is the plaintiff ...
New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964)
The constitutional guarantees require, we think, a federal rule that prohibits a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made with "actual malice" -- that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.