{"id":13623,"date":"2010-09-21T12:00:25","date_gmt":"2010-09-21T17:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=13623"},"modified":"2010-09-21T12:31:15","modified_gmt":"2010-09-21T17:31:15","slug":"hypothetical-question-1-banning-bias","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=13623","title":{"rendered":"Hypothetical Question #1: Banning Bias"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’d like to ask you all a hypothetical question. \u00a0All of you lawyers out there will be especially useful, but it’s not just a legal topic, so everyone can chime in.<\/p>\n

Laws, especially criminal laws, have “elements” to them – criteria that must be satisfied for the law to apply to the situation. \u00a0For example, in Minnesota the “elements” of a defamation charge are:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Someone has to say something about you\u00a0to a third party or parties<\/em>…<\/li>\n
  2. …that is untrue…<\/em><\/li>\n
  3. …<\/em>that has a reasonable chance <\/em>of damaging your livelihood and\/or reputation…<\/li>\n
  4. …and, if you’re a public figure (and there are elements to the definition of “public figure”), it has to be done with malicious intent.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    If you want to sue someone for libel or slander you have to meet each<\/em>, as in all three <\/em>of the criteria (four if the plaintiff meets the criteria for being any form of “public figure”),\u00a0 <\/em>of the criteria above, for the charge to even be allowed to go to court.<\/p>\n

    If someone were, hypothetically, to propose a law that would make media bias illegal, what would the “elements” of such a law be?<\/p>\n

    Now, let’s be clear; I’m not advocating such a law. \u00a0This exercise has nothing whatsoever to do with proposing a law; the law would be unconstitutional anyway.<\/p>\n

    But if we were<\/em>, hypothetically, to try to make such a law, what would be the defining factors of the crime of Media Bias?<\/p>\n

    There’ll be another hypothetical question tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I’d like to ask you all a hypothetical question. \u00a0All of you lawyers out there will be especially useful, but it’s not just a legal topic, so everyone can chime in. Laws, especially criminal laws, have “elements” to them – criteria that must be satisfied for the law to apply to the situation. \u00a0For example, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13623"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13625,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13623\/revisions\/13625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}