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30 Can. B. Rev. 37 (1952)
Publishing False News

handle is hein.journals/canbarev30 and id is 49 raw text is: Publishing False News F. R. SCOTT* Montreal Should a newspaper be free to publish news it knows to be false? Should a private person be free to spread false tales about matters of public interest? If the news or tale injures the reputation of an individual, the answer will usually be in the negative. No one can defame another without becoming subject either to the criminal action for libel or to the civil action for damages. But suppose the false statement does not reflect upon any individual. Suppose it reflects upon a class of persons, such as the members of one race, or relates merely to a topic of general interest like a false announcement that war has been declared? Should the law be concerned with prohibiting lying simply because the lie is particularly big or vicious? Questions of this kind are resuming an importance they once had in the legal order. The modern development of agencies of mass communication, and the power they give a few men to in- fluence public opinion and hence to affect domestic tranquility and world peace, make news reporting a matter of great public interest. In wartime we are accustomed to strict forms of censor- ship over the written and spoken word. Propaganda has become an accepted function of the state when warfare turns psycholo- gical. By the same reasoning the maintenance of peace is seen to depend largely upon the avoidance of international recrimina- tion and warmongering. Hence international proposals for con- trolling false news have been made, though so far without success. A convention providing for an International Right of Correction has been drafted and considered at the international conferences on freedom of the press; its purpose is to allow a state to publish corrections of false or misleading reports appearing in the news- papers of another signatory state.' Similarly on the domestic plane the freedom of the press has been measured against new dangers. Anti-semitic and other * Professor of Law, McGill University. 'United Nations Year Book, 1947-48, p. 592; 1948-49, p. 564.

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