Court Opinion

ID: 9539632
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:07:19.997397+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:59:04.859663
License: Public Domain

HARGRAVE, Justice,
dissenting.
I must respectfully dissent.
The majority determines that the privileged status of this publication is a question of law for the court’s resolution citing Cobb v. Okla. Pub. Co., 42 Okl. 314, 140 P. 1079 (1914). In so doing, the court has extracted the first syllabus of that case and disregarded the remaining considerations which led, in Cobb, to a determination that the truth and fairness of the article was properly submitted to a jury.
Cobb, supra, as well as the case before the court now, deals with reports of judicial proceedings where the publication is not a verbatim republication of the proceeding. In Cobb, a portion of the report was a verbatim extract of the Attorney General’s brief. The court makes the following observation about the remainder of the report.
“But as the article in question included not only the extract above, but included also a general and rather lengthy comment on alleged conditions existing on the east side of the state as to minor Indians being defrauded of their allotments, as well as some direct comment upon the particular proceedings against Judge T.S. Cobb, the issue arose as to whether the conditions imposed by statute had been violated, and out of such issue arose the questions whether the report was fair, ... These were issues of fact to be determined from the evidence by the jury.
‘Where the report is a verbatim account of what took place at the trial, and differs so little that no reasonable man could say that what was omitted could affect the minds of the jury, it is the duty of the court to pronounce the report privileged. But, if the question of the fairness of the report is capable of different conclusions, the question of privilege is for the jury.’ 18 Am. & Eng. (2d Ed.) *10311045, and authorities cited under note 7.” (emphasis added) 140 P. 1079,1081, 1082.
In Cobb, the court applied the privilege as a matter of law to the verbatim extract of the judicial proceeding, holding it privileged, but ruled that portion of the article which was termed comment created a jury question as to its fairness.
In the case at bar, the whole of the televised report was comment. None of it was a verbatim report of the transcript of the default. The report was, in its entirety, comment by the winning party and a news reporter summarizing the proceedings in court. Whether this summary was fair and true is, under Cobb, supra, a jury question.
There remains another factor which has become highly material through the advent of television broadcast journalism. Crit-tendon is a case dealing with a visually broadcast summary of a default judgment reported by a journalist and the successful litigant. It included lengthy comment by that party and allegations that the report contains an unsuccessful attempt to acquire an interview with the doctor. Those attempts were broadcast and there are allegations that these scenes were designed to make it appear the doctor was purposely avoiding the interview with “guilty motives”.
To deal correctly with this type of publication the court must consider the information conveyed by the video portion of the broadcast, or, if you will, the visual innuendo as well as the spoken word. Failure to do otherwise is to ignore the important distinction between television and other types of journalism.
The visual aspect of this broadcast is an additional compelling reason that the fair and true aspect of this ease presents a question of fact for the jury.
Finally, from a common sense standpoint, fairness, just as reasonableness, is a question uniquely within the province of the jury. Only a jury of twelve good men and women can decide either of these issues if there is any question at all. Resolution of these issues has nothing to do with law. Only if the evidence raises no issue on the point should fairness be withdrawn from a jury.
DOOLIN, V.C.J., and LAVENDER, J., concur in the views expressed in this dissent.