Outline
NBC is using journalist privilege to cover up the fact that they tarnished Mr. Clarks and Brokers Choice of America (BOA) name by stripping him of his credibility, and journalist privilege although important cannot be used as a scapegoat for violating someone’s first amendment right. The goal is to focus on how NBC defamed Mr. Clark and BOA by running a story that was retrieved through questionable means that were said to be protected under a journalist privilege, and this could ultimately create a slippery slope for what other first amendment rights can be violated in the name of journalist privilege. Libel is a difficult thing to prove but the goal is to prove that NBC published, false, injurious, unprivileged information about Mr. Clark thus hurting his reputation. To successfully prove libel all of these things must be proven.
• Published- NBC published the information to the world in the dateline publication “tricks of the trade” that was extremely damaging to Mr. Clarks image and career.
• False- Mr. Clark felt unjustly accused of essentially running s scam business due to short videos compiled together to support this claim.
• Injurious- the information published not only hurt Mr. Clark’s image but his business as well.
• Unprivileged- only 112 words of a seminar lasting two days were used to showcase Mr. Clark and his company’s policies in a negative light. To see if the seminars were truly as corrupt as NBC made them out to be the entire videos could have been used and not just snippets of these videos equaling only 112 words.
Justices that might be sympathetic to BCA side of the case are Byron White, William Brennan, Thurgood Marshall, and possibly Lewis Powell since they seem to be the most liberal justices out of a very conservative court.
Very good!!