CLARKSDALE, MS – A Mississippi judge this month issued an order for a local newspaper to remove a critical editorial, alarming press advocates, according to The New York Times.
The Clarksdale Press Register removed the article from its website, but Wyatt Emmerich, the president of Emmerich newspaper and owner of Press Register, plans to challenge the judge’s order in a hearing in early March, said the NY Times.
Emmerich said, “I’ve been in this business for five decades and I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” adding “an editorial that is pretty plain vanilla, criticizing the City Council for not sending out the appropriate notices.”
The Press Register, founded in 1865, currently with about 7,750 readers, published the story “Secrecy, deception erode public trust” on Feb. 8, reported the Times.
“The editorial criticized officials in Clarksdale, a city of about 14,000 residents near the Arkansas border, for what it said was their failure to notify the news media before they held a special meeting on Feb. 4, where they approved a resolution asking the Mississippi Legislature to impose a 2 percent tax on alcohol, marijuana and tobacco,” according to the Times.
The piece published by the Register notes, the NY Times added, the newspaper was never notified, and was unsure of other news sources being notified.
The New York Times said the Register editor also questioned city officials’ interest in the resolution by posing the question, “Have commissioners or the mayor gotten kickback from the community?” and answering with, “Until Tuesday we had not heard of any. Maybe they just want a few nights in Jackson to lobby for this idea — at public expense.”
NYT reports commissioners voted Feb. 13 to sue the newspaper after making the false statement that the city clerk created a public notice in time for the Feb. 4 board meeting, but forgot to give copies to the editor and publisher of the Press Register, Floyd Ingram, which is a regular occurrence during these meetings.
Following the meeting NYT wrote, “Mr. Ingram went to the clerk’s office, where the clerk apologized for not sending him the notice and gave him a copy of it and the resolution that had been approved, city officials said.”
In the lawsuit against The Press Register, city officials noted efforts by Mayor Chuck Espy to lobby for a tax proposal in Jackson, the state capital, were hindered by the assertions and statements given by Ingram.
NYT details Judge Crystal Wise Martin of the Chancery Court of Hinds County, Miss., granting a temporary restraining order and again notifying the newspaper to remove the article from the website, making it completely inaccessible to the public.
Quoted in the New York Times article, Judge Martin writes, “The injury in this case is defamation against public figures through actual malice in reckless disregard of the truth and interferes with their legitimate function to advocate for legislation they believe would help their municipality during this current legislative cycle,” referring to the Emmerich assertion of free speech.
Judge Martin continued, “I don’t know how they can argue that a critical editorial is interfering with their businesses in a country that has a First Amendment that protects our right to criticize the government,” he said. “That’s the very idea of what an editorial in a newspaper does.”
The New York Times explains the city lawsuit is partly what Emmerich characterizes as an “ongoing feud” between The Press Register and Espy, noting the newspaper bothered the mayor and other officials for reporting on increased compensation and other issues, and has been on the attack ever since.
Espy is quoted by the New York Times saying, “The only thing we’re asking for in city government is to simply write the truth, good or bad. And I’m very thankful that the judge agreed to impose a T.R.O. against a rogue newspaper that insisted on telling lies against the municipality.”
Included in the New York Times reporting is a comment from Adam Steinbaugh, a lawyer at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, supporting free speech and criticizing the lawsuit, which he calls “wildly unconstitutional,” adding they “can’t sue for libel” under New York Times v. Sullivan, the landmark First Amendment decision issued by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1964.
Steinbaugh continues, “Free-speech threats come from all corners of society, whether it’s the President of the United States or a mayor, and they come from all political parties,” adding, once “we start eroding those rights, all other rights are threatened.”
The NYT noted comments from Layne Bruce, executive director of the Mississippi Press Association, stating he supported The Press Register’s right to publish the editorial and challenging the judges’ orders.
Bruce said, “This is a rather astounding order,” he said, “and we feel it’s egregious and chilling and it clearly runs afoul of the First Amendment.”
