DeSantis campaign hangover: Florida bills that limit media criticism of elected officials

Can we talk about "the truth”?

That word gets trotted out quite a bit, usually by its most egregious violators.

Former president Donald Trump, who started a social media site called Truth Social, issued false or misleading statements 30,573 times during his four years in office, according to the Washington Post’s fact checking team.

Closer to home, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ now-failed presidential aspirations generated a flurry of culture-war initiatives and quite a bit of rhetoric about “the truth.” This usually involved blaming something he calls “the corporate media” as its biggest violator.

It has been one of his greatest hits.

Last year, as he ramped up for his presidential run, DeSantis staged an hour-long event with the words “Speak Truth” as a backdrop.

“There needs to be an ability for people to defend themselves not through government regulation or restriction, but through being able to seek a private right of action,” he said.

DeSantis proposed a rejection of the current interpretation of the First Amendment by promoting a state law that would make it easier for public officials to win defamation and libel cases and collect economic damages from news outlets.

Even though that campaign talking point has reached its expiration date, the enabling legislation is marching on in the Florida Legislature in the form of two bills currently under consideration for the upcoming session.

If passed, anonymous sources on news stories would be declared false by definition, and their opinions would be automatically declared “actual malice” as a legal standard.

News outlets using anonymous sources would be obligated to pay damages to public officials and to issue apologies, retractions or corrections, even in circumstances “that there were reasonable grounds for believing that the statements in said article or broadcast were true,” one of the bills reads.

The Florida bills, if they become law, would violate the existing standard in the First Amendment, which dates back to the landmark Times v. Sullivan case in 1964. It holds that public officials cannot win libel or defamation cases if the material was published with “an absence of malice.”

To win, public figures have to prove in court that false information against them was published “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard for the truth.”

The proposed Florida law would scrap that.

In one of the Florida bills filed, just calling a public official racist, sexist, or homophobic would be a valid cause of action in a libel or defamation lawsuit.

All this legal action by Florida lawmakers to shield themselves from criticism is being packaged under the need to preserve “the truth.”

But like I said, beware of the people who throw around that word.

Here’s an example. While campaigning last week, DeSantis was spreading misinformation about COVID vaccinations.

“Every booster you take, you’re more likely to get COVID as a result of it,” he said at a town hall meeting.

The implication is that getting vaccinated from COVID is a health risk, not a health benefit. Now that’s a reckless disregard for the truth.

In the early stages of the COVID pandemic, DeSantis started out as an advocate for vaccines. But he made a sharp pivot as he geared up for his presidential run.

He began calling vaccines “jabs”, appointed an anti-vax surgeon general, and bad-mouthed the life-saving vaccines as a way to brand himself on the campaign trail as a rogue fighter against the big, bad federal government.

His “Don’t Fauci My Florida” campaign promoted vaccine hesitancy, which had life-and-death ramifications in Florida, where deaths spiked after vaccines were available.

A study done by the medical journal, The Lancet, found that vaccine hesitancy in Florida led to 61,327 extra hospitalizations and 16,235 unnecessary deaths during the first eight months that vaccines were available.

More: Sorry, Gov. DeSantis, Count me out of your Florida death cult. I got COVID vax again.

More: Outbreak of stupidity in Florida with "Ban the Jab" resolutions on COVID vaccines

And DeSantis is still a menace to public health. His recent comment parrots online misinformation that has misinterpreted research done by the Cleveland Clinic, which actually found that getting COVID vaccinations reduced infections by 30 percent.

But he doesn’t care. He had gullible voters to bamboozle, life-and-death issues be damned.

So, if you’re looking for “actual malice”, it might be a good idea to start with the guy posing under the “Speak Truth” sign.

And to beware of any public officials who think we’re all better off by creating laws that shield themselves from criticism.

Frank Cerabino is a news columnist with The Palm Beach Post, part of the Gannett Newspapers chain.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Florida bills make it easier to sue media, protect pols from criticism