A Mississippi state judge has taken the extraordinary action of ordering a newspaper to erase an editorial from its website, claiming that the editorial included undue criticisms of city government officials — a ruling that is in direct violation of First Amendment press freedoms, critics are saying.
The Clarksdale Press Register published an editorial on February 8 criticizing the city for failing to properly inform the public or local news media about a meeting on proposed tax increases on alcohol, tobacco and marijuana. The monies collected from this tax increase are meant to raise funding for the city’s police force.
Although the editorial agreed with the fund in principle, it disagreed with the method the city took to pass the increase on so-called “sin taxes,” as a meeting on the proposal was held in private, and the only notice given about the initiative was posted at city hall.
“Why did the City of Clarksdale fail to go to the public with details about this idea before it sent a resolution to the Mississippi Legislature seeking a two-percent tax on alcohol, marijuana and tobacco?” the paper’s editorial board asked. Although the notice at city hall said officials would inform media about the upcoming meeting, they failed to follow through, the paper added.
“Our Clarksdale Board of Mayor and Commissioners have stumped their toe on this one,” the paper said, and have “made us suspicious.”
On Tuesday, Hinds County Chancery Court Judge Crystal Wise Martin ordered that the paper delete from its website the editorial in question, finding that the publication had somehow engaged in “defamation against public figures through actual malice in reckless disregard of the truth.”
The paper complied with the order on Wednesday, deleting the editorial. Clarksdale Mayor Chuck Espy heralded the ruling in a statement, saying he thanked “GOD for a judicial system.”
Wyatt Emmerich, the president of Emmerich Newspapers, the company that owns The Clarksdale Press Register, was astounded by the decision.
“I’ve been in this business for five decades and I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” Emmerich said, adding that the editorial in question was “pretty plain vanilla.” Emmerich also said he plans to challenge the ruling next week.
The First Amendment, as interpreted in the 1964 Supreme Court case New York Times Company v. Sullivan, has generally allowed media to produce news and opinion articles so long as they do not contain content that is purposefully written with malice toward their subjects. Media is also typically protected from libel charges if the content they print is factual — a precedent that predates the establishment of the First Amendment and indeed the United States itself.
In her ruling, Martin was unclear how the paper was malicious toward the city. She also failed to prove that the editorial had printed any false claims — within an affidavit submitted to the court, one city official confirmed that the editorial had been truthful about the fact that the city had failed to notify any media about the meeting.
“It’s hard to imagine a more unconstitutional order than one compelling a newspaper to take down an editorial critical of the government,” Seth Sterns, director of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, told The Independent.
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