I’m only posting this because I know the all-seeing eye of Manny is watching and he’ll ban anyone who turns this into a debate.
Per several sources*, Michael Moore, in “Bowling for Columbine” took sentences and words out of one or more Charlton Heston’s speeches and edited them together, out of sequence and with words and phrases removed or rearranged, to create a new faux-speech where Heston is portrayed as saying things he never actually said.
I don’t care if you believe this or not.
Assume for the purposes of this question that it’s all true and Moore did edit unrelated words and sentences to form new thoughts and words that Heston never said and stated in the context of a documentary that Heston really did say those things. (No fair saying that it’s a parody or for entertainment purposes).
A) Could Heston sue Moore for libel/slander? (Well, of course he could, but would he be laughed out of the courtroom?)
B) What would be Heston’s chances of winning?
C) I understand that it’s pretty hard to win against a journalist on a libel charge. What sort of things tend to lead to a successful lawsuit?
Thanks!
Fenris
*Nope, no cites. I don’t want a debate on the cites.
About all I can answer is A: he could be charged with slander. Would Heston be likely to win? From what I’ve seen of the editing, I think he’d have a feasible chance.
Would it be slander? I was guessing libel or something else? I can never keep those two straight. What’s the difference?
Rather than get into the specifics of the case in question, imagine if Heston had said
“I hate Nazis and I am on record as an opponent of everything they stand for. I think that being a Nazi is as evil as it gets. That’s why I support the Simon Wiesenthal Center.”
and Moore edited it as follows and broadcast the following as fact:
“I…am…a Nazi. I…am on record as…being a Nazi. I…hate…the Simon Wiesenthal Center…and I…am an opponent of everything they stand for.”
Rather than bog down in the “Bowling for Columbine” thing, let’s use the above example.
Moore is a number of things, but a journalist he ain’t. Geraldo has more credibility as a journalist then Moore does.
It’s interesting that this topic was brought up because there has been some scuttlebutt that Moore might have to return his Oscar for Best Documentary because he did some things which you aren’t allowed to do in a documentary, chief among them, he is supposed to have staged scenes.
Not that my respect for him was very high to begin with, but it’s gotten a lot lower.
Slander is oral and libel is written. Slander is “the utterance of false charges or misrepresentations which defame and damage another’s reputation” (Merriam Webster’s Collegiate).
I actually saw Bowling for Columbine, and nowhere are Charleton Heston’s speeches edited word for word as you propose. It would be pretty obvious if it happened as you suggest. The clips in Moore’s movie all show Charleton speaking in complete sentences at public events. What I imagine is being protested is the context these clips are placed to suggest a certain agenda. Moore frames the Charleton Heston clips in a certain way to fit his purposes, but it’s pretty obvious what he’s doing. This happens all the time in the media. I don’t think any of it could be called “slanderous”, especially since Charleton Heston is a public figure, and there’s a different measure of what’s considered “slander” when applied to a public figure.
I’d say the chances of a successful lawsuit are infinitesmal. You would have to prove that Moore changed the clips to show Charleston saying something he didn’t. Context and framing doesn’t count. Just think of all the political ads on t.v. come election time - facts are thrown around out of context, but when’s the last time someone sued an opponent successfully for slander for something like that.?
What you suggest, switching words around to create a certain sentence, which wasn’t what the speaker said, would be illegal, but that’s not what’s going on here. Maybe you should have given a real example. (Video is a bad example. I’d say it’s impossible to splice together a sentence from individual words on film and not be obvious unless the speaker doesn’t move any part of his body including his face and even then, the placement of words in a sentence determines intonation)
Folks, please. Let’s keep this thread alive. Don’t respond to the above stuff. It’s WAY outta place in GQ and since I said, "Assume for the purposes of this question that it’s all true ", it’s not even relevant. I really don’t wanna have another “Bowling for Columbine: Sux or not?” thread.
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Ok. Let’s discuss context and framing. If Moore showed a long-shot of Heston speaking at the did a voiceover of Heston at the Simon Wiesenthal Center and did a voice over of Heston playing a Nazi in one of Heston’s old movies (I have no idea if Heston ever played a Nazi), what about that? Would that be slander? Or just “context and framing”? Could you expand on that idea?
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It is what’s going on here. Read the sentences that go
GQ is for facts. Fact. People ARE saying that Moore did this, rightly or wrongly: I heard an hour long discussion about this on the radio and have heard a couple of co-workers discussing it too. I don’t care if you think it’s right or wrong that some of the public percieves the situation this way. Go to GD and open a thread there. Go to the Pit and rant. Go to CS and discuss the artistic merits.
But I wanna discuss the legal ramifications of my hypothetical…and I’d really prefer it to stay in GQ.
I am not a Mod and I have no power to enforce this, but I really request that you (and Payton’s Servant), go discuss Moore’s merits (or lack thereof) elsewhere.
Cite? Not only have I not heard any such rumor, but I question that there is any “bylaw” that designates what does and doesn’t constitute a documentary. All documentary submissions are screened by a panel of professional documentarians selected by the Academy. Any question to the appropriateness of a submission would be resolved way before it ever reached the nomination stage.
The problem is that your hypothetical is flawed, Fenris. The exact words matter; they are everything.
Mere editing is insufficient for slander. The editing may have been done for clarity, consiseness, or flow. Almost all interviews are edited transcripts or screenings. Very few people, even professional spokesmen like Heston, are capable of forming completely parsed sentences off the cuff.
What matters are the exact words that Heston said as opposed to the exact words that are featured in the movie, assuming of course that any such thing occurred. Are the words in the movie a statment that is an approximation of things Heston has said elsewhere or a complete distortion of what other people think he believes? Did Moore do this knowingly, i.e. create a deliberately false statement to put into Heston’s mouth as opposed to merely editing badly?
And most importantly, the crux of any case, if the words are false and were knowingly inserted into Heston’s mouth, did they do his reputation substantial and quantifiable damage?
To even begin making a comment - hypothetical or no - you have to have the original transcript up against the movie transcript, just for starters. I can’t understand why you think that taking the actual words used out of the problem makes it a better question. All it does is make it unanswerable.
In the real world, there has not been any quantifiable damage to Heston’s reputation that I’ve heard of. He has not been removed from NRA office; he has not been denied speaking engagements; he has not been refused work as an actor. I don’t see how there would be any case here.
If you want some answers, start over, give us the cites and give us the transcripts and maybe something meaningful can be said. You’re not getting any good answers because you’ve given us nothing to work with.
Fine. Here’s a cite with links to the original and edited transcripts and the guy even took time to color code them.
Here’s another one by Rodger Ebert. with links to both Heston’s speechs that were spliced together and Moore’s…revised…version.
But since I really didn’t want to discuss the specifics of “Bowling” and since the hypothetical I gave is apparently too problematic, I request a Mod put this thread out of it’s misery and close it.
I don’t think it should be closed, I think it’s a valid question.
I don’t know a whole lot about law, but it seems clear to me that Moore had malicious intent in the editing (In fact, as the entire segment was meant to demonize the NRA, I don’t think that this can even be argued), and it seems like that’s all that should matter. If it’s that clear that Moore’s reason for editing the speech was to make Heston look bad, it should qualify as slander.
But then again, I hate Michael Moore for other reasons, so my opinion may be biased.
Here’s the direct link to the transcripts side by side. I would say also that as he edited the part about what Heston said about the mayor to fake sentence continuity, Heston would have a strong case.
To everyone else: I really just wanted to discuss the general principle, not the specifics “Bowling”, hence the made-up Nazi example. In retrospect I shouldn’ta used “Heston” and “Moore” in it and I didn’t really ask the question I was trying to ask anyway, so I’m standing by my request to have the thread closed.
Since there seems to be (ha! ) an interest in discussing the specifics of the film, might I suggest GD or CS or The Pit? I won’t be starting it, but it could be good reading.
Heston would have to prove that Moore made false statements of fact about him in the film. “Heston and the NRA are heartless scum that don’t care about children” is not actionable because that is just an opinion.
And since he is a public figure, he would also have to prove “actual malice”–that Moore knowingly made false statements, or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. But since Heston actually said those things, no matter what the context, I don’t think he would win.
And yes, the hypothetical is flawed. Parody is a legit defense to libel, as seen in Falwell v. Flynt, although one could probably argue that Moore meant people to take Bowling for Columbine more seriously than Larry Flynt’s ad parody in Hustler.
) an interest in discussing the specifics of the film, might I suggest GD or CS or The Pit? I won’t be starting it, but it could be good reading.