Fabricated Quotations as Cause for Libel Recovery by a Public Figure

Abstract

A public figure picks up a newspaper or magazine to read a story about himself. Within the story, between quotation marks, he finds words he never uttered. If the substance of the fabricated quotations is damaging, the public figure may feel that the publication has defamed him in a particularly damning way, by making the damage seem his own doing. How should a court respond when the public figure brings a libel action based on the fabrications? In Masson v New Yorker Magazine, Inc.,1 a divided panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed summary judgment for the media defendants. For purposes of summary judgment, the court assumed that the defendants knew the damaging quotations they published-which purported to be verbatim-were very different (at least in language, and arguably in content) from the subject's actual words. Nonetheless, the majority endorsed the journalist's right to invent quoted material as long as the inventions are either 'rational interpretations' of ambiguous remarks ... or do not 'alter the substantive content' of unambiguous remarks.2 This ruling provoked an incredulous dissenting opinion,3 as well as critical commentaries by non-lawyers,4 accusing the majority of