John Dean On the Shirley Sherrod Matter

John Dean weighs in on whether Shirley Sherrod should take legal action against Andrew Breitbart and Fox News over Mr. Breitbart's presentation of an edited version of her remarks before a local NAACP audience and Fox News' airing of the clip without investigating whether any more of it was available. (NB: the date on this post seems to be incorrect: surely it should read something other than July 9, 2009). His conclusion: while she probably has a false light cause of action against both, she'd be in for years of unpleasantness in and out of court, and she's already gotten a lot of favorable publicity in the aftermath of this matter. Mr. Dean also analyzes Jonathan Turley's post on the false light case Ms. Sherrod could put forward. Prof. Turley in turn references Mr. Dean. While neither post mentions important Supreme Court cases decided in the false light area, they are Time Inc. v. Hill (376 U.S. 254 (1967)) and Cantrell v. Forest City Publishing (419 U.S. 245 (1974)), which set forth the constitutional standards.