The Supreme Court of the United States on 9 March 1964, in an
attempt to bring order and cohesion to the jurisprudence of
libel, extended citizens everywhere a constitutional privilege to
falsely defame public officials. The privilege, however, was condi-
tional. As declared by the Court in the case of New York Times v.
Sullivan, it existed only so long as the false libels were about offi-
cials' public conduct and were published without actual malice.
And actual malice was defined as knowledge of falsity or reckless
disregard of falsity. ¹ The burden of proving the knowing or reckless
falsehood, the Court said, was on the officials who brought damage
suits for libel.

In effect, the Court had issued a new character of freedom to
allow people to make misstatements of fact in even scandalous,
contemptuous criticism of public officials. And the charter, based
on free speech and press guarantees in the First Amendment to the
United States Constitution, was made binding on the states through
the Fourteenth Amendment. ² It had to be enforced with uniformity
and conformity in state and federal courts throughout the nation.

The new nationwide standard of libel propounded in New York
Times v. Sullivan resulted from a full-page advertisement that the
Supreme Court described as an "expression of grievance and pro-
test on one of the major public issues of our time." ³ The New York
Times advertisement, entitled "Heed Their Rising Voices," con-
cerned the civil rights movement in Montgomery, Alabama, and
asked the public to help Southern Negroes in their efforts to achieve
human dignity. It said Negroes were being met with a "wave of
terror by those who would negate the Constitution and the Bill
of Rights." Several paragraphs were included to illustrate the wave

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