"American Libel" is a documentary about three lawsuits: in each of those suits, someone believed his reputation had been injured by a journalist’s false statement and sued that journalist in court.

The first lawsuit described in this documentary was brought by L.B. Sullivan, a police commissioner in Birmingham, Alabama: that lawsuit contended that the New York Times had defamed law enforcement officers who had interacted with Martin Luther King Jr. That  lawsuit eventually led to the famous Supreme Court decision of New York Times v. Sullivan, which rewrote the law of libel for the entire country.

The second lawsuit described in this documentary was brought by a state legislator against the newspaper my father wrote for: that state legislator argued that my father’s editorials, which criticized the state legislator’s voting record, also damaged his reputation.

The third lawsuit described in this documentary was brought by me against a different newspaper editor when I was a state legislator: that lawsuit also argued that a newspaper editorial, which accused me of crimes I had never committed, had damaged my reputation.

The goal of my documentary is to tell a few entertaining stories about American history and politics while illuminating the strange territory of the modern law of libel.

- Dan Greenberg (bio), writer and producer of "American Libel"