Jerry LambeApr 8th, 2021, 2:01 pm
Sponsor of HB1219 Rep. Susan Lynn.
State lawmakers in Tennessee are moving forward with a bill aimed at “stopping the press from serving as a slander machine” by mandating that media outlets which publish reports on criminal charges or civil lawsuits filed against individuals or organizations also publish a follow up report on the outcome of those cases. Legal experts resoundingly derided the measure as “laughably unconstitutional.”
The HB1219, also known as the “Stop Guilt by Association Act,” was placed on the House Civil Justice subcommittee calendar Wednesday and scheduled for debate next week.
Under the measure, if a media outlet reported on the initial facts of a particular controversy, that outlet would also be required to provide comparably equal coverage in “time, place, magnitude, prominence, scale, and manner” regarding the ultimate conclusion of that controversy. It would also entitle people accused of criminal conduct to demand that outlets remove “any unflattering photographs or mugshots” if the accused “receives an outcome more favorable than originally sought by the petitioner or available to the petitioner.”