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"In the winter of 1984, an extraordinary series of events brought two remarkable libel suits to trial in neighboring courtrooms in Manhattan, and in doing so brought into almost astrological configuration three of America's most powerful establishments; military, legal and journalistic. In both courtrooms, a renowned general was suing a media giant for libel: William Westmoreland contended that he had been libeled in a CBS documentary that claimed he had led a "conspiracy at the highest levels" to conceal crucial estimates about enemy troop strength in Vietnam; and Israel's Ariel Sharon was suing Time for having published a story claiming that Sharon had discussed the need to take "revenge" with Lebanese Christian leaders just before a Phalangist massacre of Palestinians during the Lebanese War. To complete the paralleled, both CBS and Time were defended by the same aggressive New York law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore. With an unmatched eye for the telling or damning detail, and with an unprecedented understanding of the way in which important trials are shaped not simply by what goes on in the courtroom but by the long and opaque process of deposition and discovery before the trial, Adler draws a portrait of lawyers, generals and journalists worthy of Daumier or Dickens."--Jacket.… (más)
Between the lore and the reality as Ms. Adler sees it is the substance of ''Reckless Disregard,'' most of which ran in a two-part New Yorker series last June and is supplemented here only by a brief ''Coda'' responding to long documents submitted to Ms. Adler and her various publishers by Cravath and CBS in reaction to the original New Yorker pieces. (Time magazine also issued a memorandum, but, as Ms. Adler writes, ''though it was no more impressive,'' its ''evident relative sincerity,'' among other things, persuaded her not to take the trouble to rebut it.) As readers of the widely discussed New Yorker pieces must know, the case Ms. Adler makes is exhaustively (and exhaustingly) detailed, particularly in its examination of deposition transcripts made during pretrial discovery proceedings. It is acutely reasoned to the point of wittiness, and occasionally outright funny in its demolition of key witnesses for Time and CBS.
añadido por SnootyBaronet | editarNew York Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt(Nov 6, 1986)
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
To Erna Strauss Adler
Primeras palabras
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
“One moment, please,” Judge Pierre N. Leval said on January 17, 1985, to the twelve jurors and six alternates in Room 318 of the United States Courthouse, on Foley Square, in Manhattan.
Citas
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
The sheer waste of time, quite aside from the waste of money, in an American lawsuit can resemble something out of Bleak House. And in both cases it sometimes seemed that somewhat better educated and more energetic refugees from Bleak House were litigating on behalf of somewhat more righteous and less hurried refugees from Scoop.
As early as the first depositions in Sharon, it was evident that witnesses with a claim to any sort of journalistic affiliation considered themselves a class apart, by turns lofty, combative, sullen, lame, condescending, speciously pedantic, but, above all, socially and, as it were, Constitutionally arrogant, in a surprisingly unintelligent and uneducated way.
What they were intellectually was in some ways surprising: better educated than their predecessors, they were not remarkable for their capacity to reason, or for their sense of language and of the meaning of even ordinary words. Nonetheless, they appeared before the courts not like any ordinary citizens but as though they had condescended to appear there, with their own conception of truth, of legal standards, and of what were to be the rules. As for “serious doubt,” it seemed at times unlikely that any of these people had ever entertained one—another indication that “serious doubt” cannot long continue as a form of “actual malice” in the law. What was true and false also seemed, at times, a matter of almost complete indifference to them. Above all, the journalists, as witnesses, looked like people whose mind it had never crossed to be ashamed.
Últimas palabras
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
"In the winter of 1984, an extraordinary series of events brought two remarkable libel suits to trial in neighboring courtrooms in Manhattan, and in doing so brought into almost astrological configuration three of America's most powerful establishments; military, legal and journalistic. In both courtrooms, a renowned general was suing a media giant for libel: William Westmoreland contended that he had been libeled in a CBS documentary that claimed he had led a "conspiracy at the highest levels" to conceal crucial estimates about enemy troop strength in Vietnam; and Israel's Ariel Sharon was suing Time for having published a story claiming that Sharon had discussed the need to take "revenge" with Lebanese Christian leaders just before a Phalangist massacre of Palestinians during the Lebanese War. To complete the paralleled, both CBS and Time were defended by the same aggressive New York law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore. With an unmatched eye for the telling or damning detail, and with an unprecedented understanding of the way in which important trials are shaped not simply by what goes on in the courtroom but by the long and opaque process of deposition and discovery before the trial, Adler draws a portrait of lawyers, generals and journalists worthy of Daumier or Dickens."--Jacket.
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