Philadelphia Newspapers Inc. v. Hepps

Defamation is the smearing of someone's reputation either by speaking (slander) or by writing (libel). Common law normally assumes statements determined defamatory through malice (hateful intent) or "careless indifference" are false until the speaker proves them truthful. No simple guidelines identifying what constitutes defamation exist due largely to infinite possibilities. Consequently, the Supreme Court's interpretation of how libel law applies to private individuals has been inconsistent with sharply divided votes.

The Supreme Court has struggled greatly over the issue of media responsibility in reporting the truth. Libel law did not become a subject under Court scrutiny until 1964. In the landmark New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) case the Court established that a public person (meaning actors, sports figures, government officials, and politicians) must prove the media acted with malice, not just using false information, to win a libel case. The Court identified an intense "national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open" including "sharp attacks." This test became known as the "actual malice standard" and brought civil libel law under constitutional protection. In Time, Inc. v. Hill (1967) the Court extended the actual malice standard to private citizens when incidentally involved as victims in crimes of public interest.

With some change in justices on the bench, the Court later reversed its direction. The Court ruled in Gertz v. Welch (1974) that the actual malice standard did not always apply when a private citizen was suing the media for defamation. A distinction between public and private parties was based on a private citizen's lesser access to media sources for response, and that a private citizen does not normally seek public attention. The Court also determined that press freedom should be weighed against public interest when private citizens were the focus of the press. But the states were left to individually define how to balance concerns of private citizen defamation with that of press censorship.

Pennsylvania state law required a private individual alleging defamation by the press to prove carelessness or malice, however, it was the press responsibility to prove truthfulness of a defamatory statement. In presenting arguments, Hepps offered considerable testimony that the Inquirer's statements were false leaving the Inquirer to prove their truthfulness. In rebuttal, the Inquirer took advantage of Pennsylvania's "shield law" on several occasions to avoid revealing information sources. Unexpectedly, the court decided the state defamation law requiring the Inquirer to prove truthfulness of its statements was unconstitutional and instructed the jury that Hepps had responsibility to prove the published statements false. The jury decided in favor of Philadelphia Newspapers.

Hepps appealed the verdict and court proceedings to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. In 1982 the court, ruling in his favor, determined that Hepps only needed to prove malice by the press to decide the defamation question and that proving truthfulness was not necessary. The court added that requiring the publisher to prove truthfulness as required in the Pennsylvania state law "did not unconstitutionally inhibit free debate" as the lower court had found. The case was sent back for retrial. The U.S. Supreme Court then assumed the case.