Making it easier to sue people for libel is not a good idea — for our democracy in general, and even for President Trump and a few of his personal lawyers, in particular.

Trump has railed against existing legal protections, most recently following the publication of journalist Michael Wolff’s searing book “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.” On Wednesday, Trump said he will take a “strong look” at the country’s libel laws because they are a “sham and a disgrace and do not represent American values and American fairness.”

Just hours earlier, Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen sued BuzzFeed Inc. and consulting firm Fusion GPS for defamation, claiming they had made unproven or erroneous allegations about him in a controversial “Russia dossier” compiled by Fusion and later published by BuzzFeed.

The laws that Trump wants to tinker with are rooted in a 1964 U.S. Supreme Court decision, New York Times v. Sullivan, which protects critics of public officials, even if their offending speech contains error — as did the newspaper advertisement at the heart of that legal dispute.

Most certainly that decision and others that followed it are not license to fabricate and defame without concern. The Times v. Sullivan decision stakes out conditions in which defamatory material is not protected: Material disseminated with “malicious intent” — that is, with the knowledge it is false — or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.

But absent those circumstances, the Court said, the need for a democracy to have an “uninhibited, robust and wide open” discussion on matters of public interest requires that we accept that those discussions likely will contain “vehement, caustic and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.”

“I consider [the book] a work of fiction,” Trump told reporters on Jan. 6, at a meeting at Camp David, Md. “The libel laws are very weak in this country. If they were strong, it would be very helpful. You wouldn’t have things like that happen where you can say whatever comes to your head.”

Actually, the very point of the First Amendment’s protection for free speech and a free press is that we get to say “whatever” comes into our heads, with very few restraints, without fear of being prevented or punished by the government. The Sullivan standard accepts inadvertent error in the effort to inform citizens on matters of public interest.

In response to Cohen’s lawsuit, a spokesman for BuzzFeed said that “The dossier is, and continues to be, the subject of active investigations by Congress and intelligence agencies. It was presented to two successive presidents, and has been described in detail by news outlets around the world. Its interest to the public is obvious.” The spokesman added, “This is not the first time Trump’s personal lawyer has attacked the free press, and we look forward to defending our First Amendment rights in court.”

Cohen relies, ironically, on the very standard in Sullivan that Trump would alter or remove: That the material in the dossier was published with knowledge that it was false.

As has been noted by many experts following Trump’s multiple threats to change libel law, it isn’t possible to make changes with the stroke of a presidential pen, or even an act of Congress. Libel laws are state laws, so changes would have to take place in 51 sets of statutes (including Washington, D.C.), through a Supreme Court decision, or through constitutional changes. Neither is likely.

The best tactic in defending Trump against the criticism in Wolff’s book or the allegations in the Fusion dossier may well be to use the power already in the hands of Trump and his cohorts: The power public officials have to respond effectively to negative and damaging comments (which is so much more than that of non-celebrities that in Times v. Sullivan public officials — and later all public figures — were granted less protection against such comments).

Clearly, Trump and his legal representatives have plenty of means to counter virtually any allegation, including Tweet storms, via sympathetic news outlets, and from the daily platform of the White House briefing room.

In other words, Trump can use the “Bully Pulpit” that is the White House — and, if you will, the “Bully Tweets” that he relies on so much. He shouldn’t try to silence the news media for reporting what the public needs to know, but instead encourage journalists to report the claims on all sides, including his own.

Trump needs to join in the “uninhibited, robust and wide open” discussion that is democracy’s lifeblood, rather than trying to silence others in this ongoing national conversation.

Gene Policinski is president and chief operating officer of the Newseum Institute. He can be reached at [email protected], or follow him on Twitter at @genefac.

By RON WILSON
Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development

Let’s go to New York City to a high-end restaurant and order a Braveheart steak. The steak is delicious. These steaks are available in high quality restaurants across the country – but there is only one place in the nation where a person can get one of these steaks to cook at home. That place is not Manhattan, New York, but Manhattan, Kansas.

Jake Worcester and his partners are the owners of Manhattan Meat Market in Manhattan, Kansas. Jake and his friends wanted high quality, locally-sourced meat so they started this meat market of their own.

Jake grew up on a farm in northwest Kansas where his family consumed meat they raised themselves. (That takes the “know your farmer, know your food” concept to a whole new level!) Jake was active in 4-H and FFA, went to K-State where he was elected student body president, served as Kansas assistant secretary of agriculture, and now is president and CEO of the Kansas 4-H Foundation.

“We noticed a resurgence of interest in specialty meats and local meat products,” Jake said. In recent years, he talked about this with friends and former co-workers at the Kansas Department of Agriculture and elsewhere. In order to respond to this consumer demand, Jake and these friends opened Manhattan Meat Market in June 2017.

“Our goal is to provide great local products with great customer service to the Manhattan community,” Jake said. “In a larger sense, we also want to tell the story of Kansas farmers and ranchers who have such a great product.”

“Our first decision was that we wanted to distribute Braveheart beef,” Jake said. These steaks are produced by the Beef Marketing Group in Kansas and typically go to high-end restaurants including Harry’s in Manhattan and many on the east coast. Manhattan Meat Market is the first in the country where a consumer can buy those steaks and cook them on his or her own grill.

“Our second decision was that we wanted to feature local producers – and we mean local,” Jake said. For example, Manhattan Meat Market offers many products grown in rural Riley, Pottawatomie, and surrounding counties. These include lamb from Glenn Brunkow near Westmoreland, meat goats from Brenda Jordan at Riley, bison from Rick Eyestone near Junction City, and pork from Josh Wendland near Barnes, population 159 people. Now, that’s rural.

These products are supplemented with other products as needed, such as additional pork from Nebraska and seafood from the coasts. The meat is brought in to Manhattan Meat Market as primal or sub-primal cuts. There is no slaughtering done at Manhattan Meat Market. The store offers pre-packaged products or the staff can custom-cut an order.

“Because we don’t have mass volume, we’re able to get to know and serve our customers,” Jake said. The store also offers related products such as rubs and sauces and local favorites such as Alma Cheese and Holy Goat Creamery cheese, plus much more. Occasionally, items such as striped bass and steelhead salmon are available.

One partner, Chad Bontrager, helps source products through his ownership of locker plants in Frankfort and Meriden, plus Yoder Meats. “We’ve got the right kind of team to serve the customer,” Jake said.

“If there’s a place in Kansas to buy great meat, Manhattan ought to be the place,” Jake said. “We’re situated in the Flint Hills next to the nation’s leading land-grant university and one of the country’s finest meat science departments.”

Food safety and quality are top priorities. “We want to help educate people that the U.S. food system is the safest in the world,” Jake said. The focus is also on superior quality and service. “We believe there is a market for high-end, locally-sourced, premium product.”

For more information, go to www.mhkmeats.com.

It’s time to leave New York City where we found a steak that can only be purchased for home use in Manhattan, Kansas. We salute Jake Worcester and all those involved for making a difference with entrepreneurship in the protein business. Manhattan Meat Market is a place where high quality and customer service can meet.