Philadelphia Newspapers Inc. v. Hepps

Justice Stevens, joined in dissent by Chief Justice Burger and Justices White and Rehnquist, sharply disagreed that private citizens should be treated the same as public and governmental figures. They should not be required to prove defamatory statements are also false. Stevens wrote the media should be clearly held responsible for false or irresponsible statements and the common defamation law of Pennsylvania should prevail. In many situations, a private citizen would not be able to disprove accusations about his past are false due to loss of records, death of possible witnesses, or other developments through time. Stevens believed the decision was a blatant misuse of previous rulings by equating public figure cases to those involving private citizens. In fact, he pointed out that in Gertz the Court actually considered and rejected the notion that private citizens must the bear the same responsibilities for proving truthfulness of statements as public persons.

By placing so little importance on protecting individual reputation, Stevens lamented the only victors in the decision would be publishers "who act negligently or maliciously." Prevention of false information serves an important public purpose as the McCarthy era of the 1950s demonstrated when government officials and the press falsely accused citizens of communist connections. Stevens charged the Court in essence granted the press a constitutional license to defame through character assassination. He concluded, "deliberate, malicious character assassination is not protected by the First Amendment" but truthful statements are.