Sykes’ Libel Case
My fellow Wisconsin webloggers haven’t let me down in talking about Robert Miranda’s libel case against Charlie Sykes. James Widerson recalls Sykes contacting him to see if he remembered Robert Miranda attending a 1991 pro-war rally at UWM. Owen at Boots & Sabers reminds me Sykes only had the offending post on his weblog for a few hours. He took it down, but the post could still be accessible if you knew where to look. Sykes has retracted his original reporting. That may lead to a settlement before the trial starts Tuesday.
I’m a fan of Sykes and have been on his radio show. I have a bias. But still, what Sykes has done is commendable. He posted a story in good faith and when he discovered it was flawed he stepped back from it. Was he perfect in his retraction? No. It feels very defensive to issue a full-blown correction just before a libel trial is set to begin. I haven’t heard him mention his correction on his radio show. I would hope he’d do that if he hasn’t already. However, Sykes’ correction is far different from one in the Journal Sentinel. With the newspaper you have to dig around to the corrections section (where is it anyway?). Sykes treated his correction just like any weblog post. As Owen writes,
The duty of any good blogger is to correct that information in a public way as soon as he or she knows that it is false. But even if the information is corrected, the original incorrect information can remain on the web forever.
“Libel Suit Against Sykes”
As an aside, Miranda originally claimed he wasn’t in Milwaukee at the time of the 1991 rally. When pressed by Milwaukee Magazine he said, “I don’t know how I can prove where I was.”
