What Are Libel Laws? Trump Attacks The New York Times For Negative Coverage

President Donald Trump tweeted Thursday on the New York Times' coverage of his campaign and administration and again called for changes to the U.S.'s libel laws. He shared a New York Post article in his tweet that criticized the newspaper's coverage.

Trump had called for changing the country's libel laws even when he was a presidential candidate. Last year, in February, Trump said that as president, he would "open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money."

Read: Most Republicans Don't Think A Free Press Is Important, New Poll Reveals

Again in late October, Trump said the U.S. protections for the press might go too far and that the country's libel and slander laws should resemble British law. "Well in England they have a system where you can actually sue if someone says something wrong," Trump said, according to reports.

Libel is a legal term that refers to a written form of defamation. The dictionary defines libel as "false or unjustified injury to someone's good reputation." Slander also refers to the same, however, it is a defamatory statement that is spoken to others about anyone, rather than a written form. However, now with the rise of electronic age, the legal difference between the two has blurred. Currently, U.S. television networks too sometimes get sued for libel as their reporters or correspondents speak to an audience watching or listening to them, according to a report published by the United States Information Agency.

In a landmark ruling in 1964, the Supreme Court established the First Amendment principles that govern the country’s libel laws, with its unanimous decision in New York Times v. Sullivan. In that ruling, the court said that in order to win a libel suit, a public figure against whom a libelous statement had been written has to prove that something false was written about him that harmed his reputation. The public figure also has to prove that the writer wrote that with "actual malice."

When Trump first raised the topic of changing libel laws during his campaign last year, experts said that it would be difficult for two major reasons — first, libel law is administered at the state, not at the federal level, and secondly, even if Trump tried to push state legislatures to make changes, it would require a long time to get around the major 1964 Supreme Court precedent, according to Politico.