Trump has also suggested that as president, he would enact new restrictions on the First Amendment’s guaranteed freedom of the press. “We're going to open up those libel laws,” Trump said in February. “So when The New York Times writes a hit piece which is a total disgrace … we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they're totally protected.” For more than 50 years, the Supreme Court has held that for a public figure to prove libel against a news outlet, they must show that the outlet acted with “‘actual malice’ — that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” To seek to overturn this constitutional protection such that news organizations could be sued for publishing a story that gets some minor facts wrong but is not actually malicious would run contrary to our long-established understanding of the First Amendment freedoms of speech and the press. In a constitutional democracy, it is essential that the press has broad freedom to investigate public officials so that voters have the information needed to hold them accountable.
Trump isn't the only one to oppose the "New York Times v Sullivan" standard. The late Justice Scalia has also voiced distaste for the precedent. In an interview with Charlie Rose he said:
One of the evolutionary provisions that I abhor is New York Times v. Sullivan. It made a very good system that you can libel public figures at will so long as somebody told you something — some reliable person — told you the lie that you then publicized to the whole world. That’s what New York Times v. Sullivan says. That may well be a good system and the people of New York state could have adopted that by law, but for the Supreme Court to say that the Constitution requires that — that’s not what the people understood when they ratified the First Amendment
While I have immensely dislike Donald Trump and strongly oppose what he stands for, I'm inclined to agree with him here. The view that the press having broad freedom to investigate public figures is, I
believe misguided. The press, like all other money making corporation, are interested in selling papers. And finding scandals that embarrass public officials is often a better way of said selling papers than proper balanced discussion of policy issues. Other countries,
including my own, have much more plaintiff friendly defamation laws including for public officials and still maintain a democratic system of governance. I also reject the view that freedom of the press is necessary to hold politicians accountable, believing personally that it is something of a supposed "trump card" shall we say journalists throw whenever media law reform is on the table. Singapore has very strict press controls and a relatively strong culture of censorship, but
extremely limited levels of public corruption. This is probably largely because they have efficient
enforcement of anti-corruption laws by an independent and well financed body. The view that the press present "information" to voters is too simplistic a statement. Media outlets can be selective in what they report in order to benefit certain candidates or political positions, they can sensationalise matters and take material out of context and by getting facts wrong
they can misrepresent and openly
vilify marginalised people. While journalists can be responsible for very good investigatory journalism and commentary, the media reinforces structural inequalities so it's freedom is largely of benefit to the privileged and can in some cases harm the marginalised.