By NYU Staff

As the media industry contracts, reporters turning to freelance careers are facing the scary possibility that any legal costs could fall solely on their shoulders. In recent years, freelancers have faced multi-million dollar libel suits while worrying about finding an affordable lawyer. The Online Media Legal Network was recently launched by the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society to provide free legal advice and representation to freelancers, online journalists and bloggers. A look at past cases involving freelancers underscores the importance of the function this legal network will serve.

The Citizen Media Law Project maintains a database of cases involving journalists and bloggers. In one example, freelancers Tony Hays and Charles Thompson III wrote a series of articles published in WorldNetDaily.com  in 2000, alleging “corruption involving then-Vice President Al Gore and others in Gore’s home state of Tennessee,” according to WND.com accounts of the case. Clark Jones, a Tennessee businessman, who had been named in the articles, brought a $165 million libel case against WND.com, Thompson, Hays and several others. According to WND.com articles covering the lawsuit and a summary from the Citizen Media Law Project’s online database, the case traveled to a state appeals court, which ruled that if Hays did not reveal the anonymous source of allegedly defamatory information, the truth of that information could no longer be used as a defense. The state Supreme Court declined to hear the case “because WorldNetDaily.com did not take a proper appeal,” according to CMLP’s database summary.

The case was settled in 2008 on undisclosed terms. A statement released at the time essentially retracted the reporting regarding allegations against Jones.

Thompson did not respond to a request for comment. The settlement bars Hays from talking about the case, but he said in an email, “a freelancer should always be worried about finding affordable legal representation in the event of a lawsuit, and organizations such as the one … at Harvard are a godsend to freelance journalists, as are nonprofits like the US Justice Foundation, which represented me.” The US Justice Foundation is described as “your conservative voice in the courts,” as well as “a nonprofit public interest, legal action organization dedicated to instruct, inform and educate the public on, and to litigate, significant legal issues confronting America,” on its website.

The Online Media Legal Network offers free legal services to people and groups that meet certain criteria, which includes freelancers who earn $45,000 a year or less or are married and make $75,000 or less as a household. Lawyers will accept work that ranges from Freedom of Information Act requests to going to court.

Free legal services can be useful even if the freelancer is not the defendant. Freelance photographer Christopher Fitzgerald brought cases against CBS for alleged copyright infringement by two Boston CBS affiliates for use of a photograph he had taken of Stephen Flemmi, a member of the Mob, according to the CMLP database. The two sides eventually reached a settlement. Fitzgerald didn’t return a request for comment.

In some cases, freelancers have represented themselves in legal situations. In one such case described in the CMLP database, freelancer Lee Kaplan represented himself in a case he brought against a student blogger, who he alleged had written libelous information about him. Both parties represented themselves in small claims court and Kaplan was awarded $7,500, to be paid by the defendant. The decision was upheld on appeal. Kaplan didn’t return a request for comment.

In a press release, David Ardia, director and co-founder of the Citizen Media Law Project, said that “unlike established media organizations that have the resources to pursue important reporting in the face of legal challenges, many online ventures lack the expertise and financial resources to protect themselves and thrive in an uncertain legal environment. In order for these new media ventures to survive and flourish, they need a legal safety net, and OMLN aims to provide that safety net with the help of lawyers interested in promoting a vibrant online media environment.”

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