Opinion ID: 2631227
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Fair report privilege

Text: Stuart and Barricade raise the next issue on appeal. They urge us to extend the fair report privilege, a doctrine we recognized in Sahara Gaming v. Culinary Workers, 115 Nev. 212, 984 P.2d 164 (1999), to the official proceeding at issue in this case (namely, the Scotland Yard investigation and report). We agree that the privilege should not be limited to judicial proceedings like those at issue in Sahara Gaming. It should apply to all public, official actions or proceedings. However, the Scotland Yard report at issue here does not involve such an official action or proceeding. We therefore refuse to apply the privilege in this case. The fair report privilege is described in the Restatement (Second) of Torts & sect; 611 (1965): The publication of defamatory matter concerning another in a report of an official action or proceeding or of a meeting open to the public that deals with a matter of public concern is privileged if the report is accurate and complete or a fair abridgment of the occurrence reported. The fair report privilege is premised on the theory that members of the public have a manifest interest in observing and being made aware of public proceedings and actions. Access to information concerning the conduct of public representatives is critical to the citizenry's supervision and evaluation of actions taken on its behalf. Obviously unable to monitor all official acts in person, citizens rely on third party accounts of such actions. If accurate reports of official actions were subject to defamation actions, reporters would be wrongly discouraged from publishing accounts of public proceedings. However, comment d to section 611 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts provides that it is not clear whether the privilege extends to a report of an official proceeding that is not public or available to the public under law. Stuart and Barricade both contend that the statement at issue[ Running Scared ] details why a confidential Scotland Yard report called Wynn a front man for the Genovese familyis a protected statement under the fair report privilege. They argue that their publication accurately reported the Scotland Yard official report, and, thus, was a privileged statement. This court has not before addressed the question of whether a report generally unavailable to the public, like the Scotland Yard report in this case, is a report of an official action or proceeding subject to the fair report privilege. The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has addressed the issue. Medico v. Time, Inc., 643 F.2d 134 (3d Cir.1981), involved a libel suit brought against a news magazine that published a summary of an FBI report that identified a prominent political figure as a member of an organized crime family. The court held that the FBI files were official because government officials acting in their official capacities compiled them. Id. at 140. The court also concluded that the privilege applied to the reports based on the public's right to information, and the benefit conferred on the public by the FBI's resources to investigate matters of public concern, which individuals alone could not attain. Id. at 142. The court justified its ruling by emphasizing that an examination of the affairs of elected officials is obviously a matter of legitimate public concern. Id. Eight years later, the Third Circuit questioned the reasoning of the Medico decision in Schiavone Construction Co. v. Time, Inc., 847 F.2d 1069 (3d Cir.1988). In Schiavone, the court observed that important countervailing policy considerations raise serious issues concerning the appropriate application of the privilege to confidential FBI investigation files. Id. at 1086. The purpose of the privilege, the court pointed out, is to encourage the accurate reporting of information already available to the public. Id. Allowing the privilege to cover confidential reports would bring to light information that the government had no intention of releasing, and which could be used as a powerful tool for injury. Id. at 1086 n. 26. The court went on to note that Medico, a decision based upon Pennsylvania's fair report privilege, had been criticized as `not in harmony with the mainstream of the common law.' Id. at 1086 (quoting F. Harper, F. James & O. Gray, The Law of Torts § 5.24 n. 33 (2d ed.1986)). We agree with the court's reasoning in Schiavone and hold that unauthorized or confidential investigatory reports do not qualify as an official action or proceeding under the fair report privilege. The policies underlying the privilege are simply not served by the rule urged by Stuart and Barricade. The privilege is an exception to the common law rule that attaches liability for libel to a party who publishes a defamatory statement. See Schiavone, 847 F.2d at 1086 n. 26. The purpose of this exception is to obviate any chilling effect on the reporting of statements already accessible to the public. Here, the Scotland Yard report referenced in the statement at issue was not accessible to the public, nor did Scotland Yard itself ever recognize it as official. The report was never sent to the British Gaming Control Board, which urged Scotland Yard to compile the report, and the report was archived for being substandard and unsubstantiated. Inclusion of such a report within the ambit of the fair report privilege would directly conflict with the protections provided by our libel laws, and would undermine the basis of the privilege itself. We conclude that this privilege should not be extended to allow the spread of common innuendo that is not afforded the protection accorded to official or judicial proceedings. Accordingly, we hold that the statement at issue is not subject to the protection afforded by the fair report privilege because the report was not official.