Wycleff Jean was asked about the Fugees and Lauryn Hill in a Rolling Stone magazine interview. Even though Wycleff Jean begins his answer with the words “I think,” I think Lauryn Hill could win in a libel case against the magazine for publishing this:
How did you leave things with her?
I felt sorry for her, because I think she needs psychiatric help. I felt like she's bipolar. You can't get angry with someone who's sick. So I even called her mom, and I stressed to her, "Yo, you need to get her psychiatric help." But I think they all fear her to death. She wasn't always like this — but if someone has the ego and you keep feeding the ego, it's going to turn monstrous.
Any thoughts?
4 comments:
I actually saw him respond similarly on a talk show with Tavis Smiley. But I never really thought about it in regards to libel. But now that you mention it, I wonder how the rules differ when it is said on air in contrast to a publication reporting the quote. I feel like if there is a libel case, it would come against Wyclef because he is the one that said it, but like we'd mentioned in class, I don't feel like he said anything in a malicious context. However, that is just straight opinion.
I feel like people often say libelous things about celebrities, particularly in interviews and are rarely sued for them. A big issue here is whether it is a statement of opinion or fact. In this case I think Wyclef is expressing his opinion and also has more inside information than any of us can imagine.
This is an interesting one to bring up as libel. We see more and more these days celebrities speaking out about other celebrities, whether it's because of some crazy feud and just competition. I believe it has all just become part of the game. Wyclef seems to be stating his opinion and the fact that they are both in the public eye means theres a little more leeway to what they can say provided it is not malicious in nature.
I'm sure at face value, this seems like a libelous statement. But if you assess what Wyclef said against the six elements of libel, I think you'll see that he's safe.
1. Publication- the statement was published in Rolling Stone.
2. Defamatory- the statement definitely made defamatory allegations as to the mental state of Lauren Hill, causing her embarrassment and jeopardizing the remains of her reputation.
3. Of and Concerning the Plaintiff- obviously what was being said is about Lauren Hill, because he names she is named in the interview.
4. Falsity- there is no confusion to the facts of what is being said and just because Rolling Stone quotes Wyclef accurately, they aren't safe from a libel suit.
5. Fault- Rolling stone is definitely at fault because they were negligent to the repercussions of what is being said.
Here though is where they would be unsuccessful in completely proving this to be a libel case:
6. Statement of Fact- immediately it is known that Wyclef is not making this statement under an intention of it being factual. He said "I think..." so it's clear that what follows is merely his opinion. And we learned in class, opinions cannot help to prove libel. In the words of Professor Keith, they're "part of the basic political and social discourse of the United States... Opinions can't be true or false."
So based on this criteria, which is the same criteria a court would use to determine this statement libelous or not, it's evident Wyclef is in the clear.
While these words were not very nice, they are not libelous. I would think that Rolling Stone would be in the clear because this statement does not fall into all the elements of libel we talked about in class.
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