Perhaps the answer is to let rape be rape, let libel and slander be libel and slander, but to RAISE the severity of those last two to more of what it should actually be. Gossip, slander, libel is a terrible sin. If it destroys people, unjustly, I think it should be punished accordingly.
I know here in the UK courts will routinely impose reporting restrictions on the media, forbidding them to give names or addresses of participants in criminal cases, which restrictions are only lifted upon determination of guilt. It seems such a simple way to me of ensuring the reputation of the innocent is not sullied. I know, it shouldn’t be neccesary - you are innocent until proven guilty and the public have a “right to know”. But unfortunately in the real world people think there is “no smoke without fire”.
I agree, up to a point. But people who call for any changes in the law should think hard about it. There is the law of unintended consequences. These matters involve freedom of speech, and I would support no law that might even remotely alter or restrict this cornerstone of liberty.
Presently we are facing a very real threat to this liberty. Last week were reports of Hillary and Nancy and their ilk discussing 'talk radio,' a category of the media that for some reason excludes the liberal Juggernaut NPR
(that's 'National Public Radio', or as I prefer it: 'Nattering Public Radio. This entity was established some years ago as an Education&Edification Effort. It's neither. I've tried to get my wife to turn them off, and that's why the radio is always on that station. "It quiets and soothes the dog" she tells me. True there is something about the adnoidal drone, in it's cadence, that lulls the beast to sleep--she's a border collie and her reaction is proof of her intelligence- the dog, I mean. Saturday the thing was on, though the dog was outside barking and I was drawn in. At that moment, listening as a continuous stream of nonsense dribbled like water from a neglected faucet into the room, I had an epiphany. I declared: "Now. Now I understand!Now I know what this is about! This isn't news, or discussion. All of these words, this packages of masticated nonsense--they're ciphers! This broadcast is a conduit of coded directions to deep cover KGB operatives! The wife rolled her eyes; she's also intelligent, though I'll never understand that NPR thing.)
In any case, the liberals want to shut down independent media. Hillary, I suspect, has designs to nationalize media, to do to the press what she attempted to do with health care. Mind, she doesn't have to succeed at this to get the compliance she wants. She's shrewd and learned a thing or two since Hillary-care.
I say that it will be impossible to write any law concerning any aspect within the realm of free speech rights that will be immune from their (Hillary and her ilk) distorting, subverting and transforming into a weapon to use against us. And they will use it.
Democrats will use any and all legal means, irrespective of spirit, original intent or morality, to get their way. Conservatives tend to be too either too busy or too principled to engage in dirty, legalistic and partisan cat-fighting. This is why we're always vulnerable.
Here's a hard question that ought to be honestly and thoroughly addressed before even thinking of proposing remedial legislation: Have we 'slept on our rights?'