A reporter from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last year made several libelous statements using my name in an article he did relating to the healthcare crisis. It was supposed to be a human interest story about my brother who had died 2 mos. earlier because he could not get proper medical care without health insurance. He slanted and twisted the article and it was about the uninsured causing problems for the hospitals, not a human interest story as proposed. He used my name and my dec'd brother's picture and name for several untrue comments I supposedly made. They would not retract or correct or print a letter to editor about this. Case of libel? I think so since many people saw these lies in print. I called and was told by the court that I would need a lawyer to file a suit but several ones I called did even call me back. I did not care about getting money for this BUT getting the truth made public. I learned not to trust reporters or what they say.

Apparently Elon Musk, CEO of newly public electric car manufacturer Tesla, has cause to pursue a libel suit against Owen Thomas of VentureBeat. http://tcrn.ch/b9hd2G Musk calls Thomas to Jayson Blair of Silicon Valley.

The reporting in this story is remarkably thin--a few calls to lawyers at the New York Times and similar outlets. Why didn't the reporter simply use Lexis-Nexis and get the number of libel suits over the past few years (say 2000-2009) and see if there is, in fact, a downward trend? What about calls to newspaper industry associations to see if local papers are seeing an increase or decrease in libel suits. Or examining court dockets, now searchable electronically? Finally, there has been a boost in libel suits in the U.K. against American authors (hence the efforts of NY and other states to make those judgments harder to collect here). Some of those suits cite American newspapers, such as the case of Rachel Ehrenfeld. Why was no basic reporting done here?

Did your reporters interview [or even look for] a plaintiff's lawyer who had won a libel case against a big media company?

One reason that libel cases are so few is that expert First Amendment lawyers, like the ones in your report, represent (or want to represent) the big media companies.

Another reason is cost. The New York Times or Fox TV or TIME has financial resources sufficient to overwhelm any but an extraordinarily well-financed, well-represented, intrepid individual libel victim, who, even in victory is likely to have to pay his/her own legal fees. Almost no individual-except the late Ariel Sharon- has personal and financial resources, and good fortune sufficient to win such a case.