Our episode guest is Thomas Julin, First Amendment attorney, business litigator, and shareholder at Gunster Law Firm. Thomas has more than 30 years of experience advising companies and the media on free speech issues and libel claims.
Topic:
In this episode, Gunster’s Thomas Julin and host Jason Mudd share how brands can react to unfair news treatment and important federal statutes that come into play.
Five things you’ll learn from this episode:
Quotables
Important links:
Guest’s contact info and resources:
If you’re enjoying the vodcast, would you please share it with others and leave us a review?
Episode recorded: Nov. 18, 2021
Sponsored by:
About your host, Jason Mudd
Jason Mudd, “On Top of PR” host, is a trusted adviser and dynamic strategist for some of America’s most admired brands and fastest-growing companies. Since 1994, he’s worked with American Airlines, Budweiser, Dave & Buster’s, H&R Block, Hilton, HP, Miller Lite, New York Life, Pizza Hut, Southern Comfort, and Verizon. He founded Axia Public Relations in July 2002. Forbes named Axia one of America’s Best PR Agencies for 2021.
Our episode guest is Thomas Julin, First Amendment attorney, business litigator, and shareholder at Gunster Law Firm. Thomas has more than 30 years of experience advising companies and the media on free speech issues and libel claims.
Topic:
In this episode, Gunster’s Thomas Julin and host Jason Mudd share how brands can react to unfair news treatment and important federal statutes that come into play.
Five things you’ll learn from this episode:
Quotables
Important links:
Guest’s contact info and resources:
If you’re enjoying the vodcast, would you please share it with others and leave us a review?
Episode recorded: Nov. 18, 2021
Sponsored by:
About your host, Jason Mudd
Jason Mudd, “On Top of PR” host, is a trusted adviser and dynamic strategist for some of America’s most admired brands and fastest-growing companies. Since 1994, he’s worked with American Airlines, Budweiser, Dave & Buster’s, H&R Block, Hilton, HP, Miller Lite, New York Life, Pizza Hut, Southern Comfort, and Verizon. He founded Axia Public Relations in July 2002. Forbes named Axia one of America’s Best PR Agencies for 2021.
- [Announcer] Welcome to On Top of PR, with Jason Mudd, presented by ReviewMaxer.
- Hello, and welcome to another episode of On Top of PR. I'm your host, Jason Mudd with Axia Public Relations. Today, we're bringing you an interesting topic. We're gonna talk a little bit about what to do when you have a media, news media coverage that just doesn't quite go the way you wanted it to. And today we're joined by a partner at Gunster law firm, Thomas Julin. Thomas, welcome to the show. We're glad you're here.
- Thanks for having me.
- Yeah. So Thomas is a first amendment attorney business litigator and shareholder in Gunster's Miami office. He's got more than 30 years of experience, including litigating a range of free speech issues around the country. He represents media companies and has defended libel, slander and privacy invasion claims. Thomas we're so glad to have you here. And somebody as well-qualified as you to talk about this, this topic. As we talked about before we hit press the record button, we're gonna ask you to do maybe the little bit of the opposite of what you normally do. You're normally defending news organizations, and today we're talking about what brands and corporations need to know about journalism, about these topics and kind of set their expectations of what, what are their rights and responsibilities and what are the rights and responsibilities of news outlets? Does that sound about right to you?
- Sure, yeah that sounds good.
- [Jason] Okay excellent, excellent. I'm excited to do this with you. And maybe you could just kind of warm us up a little bit, of giving us a little bit more color, on your background and experience.
- Well, you know, although I do, mostly defense, of media work, I get many, many questions from companies all the time, about what they can do and, I can give them a pretty good answer to those things because I've seen so many different claims brought against the media, threatened against the media, campaigns that are put on to try to address allegations that are being made about companies and the companies that range from small companies, to very large companies, to individuals. Oftentimes, CEOs of companies want to know, what can be done, if something is being said about me, being posted on the internet websites. So I've seen the whole range of kinds of problems come up like that. I'm often asked to give advice. I often tell companies, it's probably not a good idea generally to sue, but there's lots of different strategies that can be employed. I got into this, line of work really because of my college experience. I was the editor of The Independent Florida Alligator at the University of Florida. And then I went on to law school at the University of Florida. And when I first came down to Miami in 1981, I did a lot of work representing the Miami Herald, Channel 10, the television station, the ABC affiliate down here. And, it was just case after case after case. They were all fascinating experiences to have, but that is my background, that's how I got going in this. And, I've litigated lots of different cases, they've changed over the years. You know, when I first started in '81, newspapers were the dominant force, television stations, really had monopolies in cities. The internet didn't exist. It was a very different type of experience. Cameras were just being put into courtrooms for the first time ever when I first started off. We did a lot of work representing, television stations that wanted to broadcast criminal trials and the defendants. And sometimes the prosecutors were trying to exclude them. Things have changed a lot, obviously since then, and they keep changing. Now we have, so much in terms of social media and so many people are able to themselves, broadcast allegations about companies, and individuals. So it's really a whole new ball game now, from when I first started off, but I've pretty much seen it all from the beginning.
- Well Thomas is a public relations professional I've seen since the great recession that newsrooms just continued to be shrinking as far as staffing, and resources that they have available to them. And then of course, when the pandemic hit, we saw some of this, even more so. So I imagine that common sense, I guess, would lead you to start thinking that fewer resources, more responsibility, like, reporting more in real time and updating social media and updating websites and things like that has got journalists not only spread thin with fewer of them, but also more responsibilities. And therefore I would imagine, that might lead to more errors and issues. Is that what you're seeing in your practice?
- Well, that's certainly true, that, journalism has changed a lot. I'm not sure that there's fewer journalists, they're just working in a different fashion. Obviously everything is happening instantaneously. There's such a premium on getting things online, as quickly as possible. That wasn't always the case when I first started off. You had, editors going over things carefully, lawyers were looking at things very carefully, yet very few media outlets. And so, you had very different type of media. Nowadays, if it's not on at the time that it's happening, it's not live, it's not breaking news that's, that's the, the key words these days.
- [Jason] Right.
- You gotta say breaking news before everything, then it's not, just doesn't feel relevant. So, you've got large journalism organizations, are still doing a lot of very difficult work that is very carefully reviewed, that has put together over the course of time, special reports and that sort of thing. The breaking news is done by the largest journalist organizations. And then you have very small organizations and lots of them, you have a lot of disaffected journalists have gone on to, decide they don't want to work for these big companies, because there are so few opportunities on the networks, on the cable stations that, or with daily newspapers. I mean, the staffs at the daily newspapers have just been cut to shreds. And so you have startups that are not for profit, they're funded by donors.
- [Jason] Right.
- And some of them are very good and some of them are not so good.
- [Jason] Yeah.
- So we've got just every kind of piece of information out there nowadays, and it's all, much of it is targeted at companies that people are upset with.
- Right, okay. Well, so let's talk about that for a minute. So the hypothetical, well, I think we have to set the table a little bit first, which is making sure our audience, and maybe in a soundbite you can help us accomplish this understands the difference between libel, slander and defamation.
- Sure, so libel is it's written words, slander is oral. There's such a lack of a difference between those two things nowadays, that really doesn't make a lot of difference, whether it is oral or in writing. They used to be very important in the old days.
- [Jason] Right I remember in journalism school, yeah.
- Written down, that was regarded as, kinda stay around forever. Now, of course, oral statements, the things that we're doing right now, this podcast, is this oral or is this written? It's really both. And so there's not much of a distinction. Libel, slander, defamation, what it is it's publication of any sort by any means, whether it's by person-to-person or by letter or by email, or by posting online. It's publication to a third party of a false and defamatory statement, meaning something that will harm someone's reputation. And there's another factor that comes into play oftentimes, and that is, was the person that published the statement at fault? Did they do enough to investigate whether what they said was true or false? Sometimes the fault standard is a very difficult one for a plaintiff, the person suing, to meet if that plaintiff is a public official or public figure. There's lots of different complex rules that apply.
- When does a, you just, you said public figure. At what point does someone become by definition, a public figure. So let me give you an example that comes to mind. So, I know of a celebrity whose brother, was once in involved in a very reckless DUI situation, right? And so friends of that person and, or the celebrity really, kind of came forward and said, "Gosh, this was really unfairly covered because if he was just an average Joe, who was out drinking, it doesn't really matter who his brother is, then this would not have made the headlines that it made." And of course then, me as the journalist and PR person says, "Well, there's this thing called prominence. And this celebrity is prominent and therefore the brother being tangent, or being related to him, makes it more prominent." But then recently I saw, I think it was a pro golfer, where his grandson ran into some trouble and that started making news. And I started scratching my head a little bit and go, "Okay, that's starting to get a little bit further down, next thing you know, they're third cousins to, this celebrity." So at what point Thomas does it really start to, no longer be relevant as far as the connection to a prominent individual.
- Well, and it's not just connection to a prominent individual. It's really lots of different things can make someone a public figure. You know, the rationale, of that distinction really, was based on the idea that if somebody was able to respond to charges that were made against that person, in media let's say, then, they shouldn't really have to file a lawsuit. They can go ahead and they can have their say. They can get the word, they can contradict whatever is being said about them. They can present their side of the story. And that was the original rationale. Now that, that rationale though was developed at a time before the internet. And so, when you were looking at who's a public figure, you were looking at who is the media covering? Is there a story, is there a history of this person being speaking out to the public, or is that person injected himself or herself into some issue that's a public concern, or maybe it's just gotten swept up into a big public controversy. That would give that person the power to comment and to refute allegations that were being made. And so they wouldn't need to have a libel case as much as a private person. Today though, everybody has access to the internet. Everybody is posting online, everybody. So there's a stronger argument today that many, many more people than used to be the case are public figures. And at that cuts back the number of people who can bring successful libel claims.
- And I think for the audience that, is tuning in, you know, we're thinking also, I'm thinking also about, the CEO of the corporation, the C-suite executive, the spokesperson on behalf of the company and the like for sure, those people and their public affairs, or, maybe even some of their private drama can either be, dragged the company into it, or maybe some of the company's doing can drag their personal life into it as well.
- Well, that's exactly right. And I think that's one of the things that needs to be taken into consideration when you're thinking about responding. You'd say that, let's say a company it sees posted online, a criticism of a product or a service that's out there. And the company decides, "Hey, we need to really multi-campaign here to rebut that. We don't want this to snowball into something that's gonna really hurt the company. Maybe it's a completely false claim that's being made, it needs to be addressed." Well, once you inject yourself into that, and you start to become a part of what might be a larger public controversy, then you can take a small company and all of a sudden it's turned into a public figure or the person that is representing the company or the president of the company who comes forth and decides, "I want to speak out on this topic." That, it might be from, that might be somebody that's fairly few people I've ever heard of, but once that person steps forward and starts commenting publicly, then they're gonna become a public figure. That's gonna make it much, much harder for that person to sue and win a libel case.
- Gotcha, yeah. Thomas, believe it or not we're kind of the halfway mark. So we're gonna take a quick break, come back on the other side and jump more into this topic, which time is just flying by 'cause I think it's really intriguing. So if you're one of our audience members stand by for this quick message and we'll be right back with Thomas.
- [Announcer] You're listening to On Top Of PR, with your host, Jason Mudd. Jason is a trusted advisor to some of America's most admired and fastest growing brands. He is the managing partner at Axia Public Relations, a PR agency that guides news, social and web strategies for national companies. And now, back to the show.
- Welcome back to On Top Of PR and we're answering questions that you have about libel, slander, what to do when you're in the news or in the media, actually, whether that's news media, social media, or web, and, you're not happy with the outcome or the coverage or the content and what you might be able to do about it. And so we're joined, by Thomas who is an attorney, and we're talking about these matters, Thomas, welcome back.
- Thank you.
- As mentioned, I'd love to just kind of dive into some scenarios that I've seen, that recently working with with brands. And so, one particular item comes to mind. So, believe it or not, there was apparently this really weird, situation where a company felt like they were being, negatively quoted in the news, and things that were happening in their organization that just seemed very minor to them, were getting amplified through the news. And they just couldn't really understand why, some of this stuff that just seemed very minor to them, was making headlines. And I guess they did a little research and come to find out the beat writer at this news outlet who was covering their industry, apparently he was related to a rival at, the brand, a rivalry company. And so this rivalry company was sending this industry beat writer, I guess, some negative stories about this one company. So the company came to me and said, "Hey, what can we do about this?" And so they had actually, Thomas, engaged an attorney and, we didn't invite that attorney on the show for a reason. And that would be that, that attorney just basically didn't really get anything accomplished. Now the news outlet ultimately ended up asking for that reporters resignation, whether it was voluntary or not, I'm not sure exactly what happened, but he moved on to other opportunities, but yet the, client was left, the company was left with these historic articles that still rank on search engines and can come up in the industry trade magazine that are all negative. And so, I kind of had an approach that I recommended, of course I'm not an attorney. So as a PR practitioner, I had a strategy of how I might approach them. And I would just be curious, what kind of case of anything, do you think they have in that situation where, at some point the news outlet became aware of this conflict of interest of which the reporter never disclosed and the content remains and if you look at it objectively, you can say, "Yeah, it's a little odd that, he went after these stories so aggressively, they ultimately ended up parting ways with that reporter." What would be your reaction to that?
- Well, so, journalists still do follow all kinds of different ethical codes. You may think that they don't, but they do.
- [Jason] Yeah.
- And editors are sensitive to charges that there's been unethical breach, that happens. And the fact that this journalist was fired or was asked to leave or, or left somehow, I mean, that shows you how, journalists are very sensitive to these things and will take action. And that sent a message, not only to the person that committed the breach, but also to everybody else in the industry. So it sounds to me like, a lot was accomplished in terms of, how do you address the stuff that's still up there, that is the product of, what this person with the ethical problem did. You can ask them to take it down. There's no ironclad rule that says they can't take it down or that they shouldn't take it down. Most journalists are gonna be reluctant to take anything down.
- [Jason] Right.
- But if you can show them that it was the product of unethical breach or that it's definitely false, they sometimes will at least publish some sort of an additional piece of information. And sometimes they will take it down. So don't think that you can't persuade them to do that when you show them that this is going all over, it's not just on your side, but it's being picked up here and there and everywhere and ordinarily the internet search engine will not get rid of it until it hasn't been taken down elsewhere. And that can take some time.
- That's right. And so minus a court order, if you can't compel them to take it down, what other options do you have, besides getting a court order?
- Well, so one option is to publish things yourself. If it's a kind of, a posting that allows comments to the posted, it's sometimes not always, but sometimes not a bad idea to respond, to say, "This was wrong. This was posted by someone who was working for a competitor. This person was discharged." Now, when you do that though, you've got to be concerned about, defaming the person that posted it, as well as the organization. So you'd want to consult a lawyer, before you start to jump into the middle of things, because there's not always going to be agreement on what happened, what's true, what's false, what's defamatory. And I'd say there's complex rules, that the courts will apply. So it's always best to try to understand, before you start saying things publicly, what's the likelihood that you're gonna be sued. You may be thinking, "I'm going after somebody. Maybe I want to sue them." But the next thing you know, they turn around and sue you. And it's very, very common to see counterclaims brought, whenever libel claims are brought in court.
- Okay, yeah, interesting. You know, when I worked in journalism, there was certainly disciplinary action. You know, when you had corrections or a series of corrections and you begin to demonstrate, how do you say, I don't wanna say negligence. That's probably too strong of a word, but when a journalist would continually make effort, I mean, all I know is I was afraid to ever have a correction, right? 'Cause you just didn't wanna have those. And at least, looking at it from the outside in, there's some news outlets, especially in, and I'm not picking on anybody, but print media where I just see the corrections, when I was involved in journalism, I know it was a goal to never have corrections. And now I feel like if I open up a newspaper, I see corrections, listed, way more than before. I have my own bias as to why I think that's the case. Again, it goes back to my argument that I think a lot of, print news outlets have fewer resources, but yet more demands on them. But regardless, what's your take on it?
- Well, I think, yeah, there is such a huge volume of material that is published and there is such a premium on publishing quickly, that it is very easy to make mistakes.
- [Jason] Right.
- But as well, the law has historically been very protective of journalism and journalists, and that it allows them to make mistakes. It says you're not gonna be sued for every mistake that is made. We need to have some, breathing space for the press to be able to make mistakes. That is being questioned though. Now that at least two justices of the United States, Supreme court are saying, "Those rules are all wrong." The court back from 1964, on the Supreme court has gotten it wrong and we need to have all new rules that have less and less first amendment protection, because there shouldn't be so many mistakes made in the first place.
- [Jason] Right.
- I'm not so sure that there's not gonna be some changes coming up.
- Well, that's going to be exciting to keep eye on and watch and see how that develops for sure. You know, I mentioned earlier, like corrections, in the print edition, and then certainly on the online edition there's corrections, where they'll update the story, which is great to have the ability to go in and update the story and make corrections there. Now broadcast is a whole another thing. I mean, if they go on the air and they talk about a correction, my experiences, it's probably a pretty big deal that they've had to take time off the air to go back and retract or correct a story from previous broadcasts. Now, maybe in the same broadcast, if they catch it and they use the wrong name, they might be able to do it quickly, but we all know what happens is, the new story drops, whether it's in print online or on the air and people hear it and they pay attention to it. Are those same people that read that story, three days later, picking up that same daily newspaper, or going back to that same article or tuning into that same broadcast to hear the correction that's made? I think not. I think they've already gone down a path where they heard one story and they've moved on with their life and their perceptions have been painted. And there's another audience who comes back later, a smaller percentage of the audience, I would argue, like with a new story that drops that sees that new story online or that new story maybe in print later, and sees it corrected, right? So that's what I always kind of counsel at least my clients is the most people that are gonna see it are right now. And as that story kind of fades away, they might find it 'cause they're searching for your branded keyword on the search engine. So it's important we get that corrected, but unfortunately, a lot of people have that bias or that inaccurate information has been painted out there. What-
- Yeah.
- Thomas, I'm right about that?
- Well, we see that argument made in almost every libel case they say that the, the truth never catches up with the lie. The lie is halfway around the world before the truth ever-
- [Jason] That's right.
- That gets out of the starting gate. So, I think that you're mostly right about that, but I think, a lot of people feel that way and I'm not so sure that the truth doesn't actually ultimately win out in the end, even if it is somewhat slow in, on the uptake. And, there's lots of different scenarios where lots of different types of harm are done, but over the course of time, as time goes by and other things are happening and things are, if you're looking back at the historical record, then that the truth is gonna win out. If you're concerned about, "What's happening this week? Am I, losing that contract? Am I losing, the customers that I need to make my quarterly financial reports?" Well, that's a different problem because it might be very difficult to get things corrected in a timely fashion.
- Yeah, yeah. Recently I heard a new story come out about a company who hired us to help them with the crisis. We didn't really know that company before the crisis hit, but I think we counted 17 issues that the company had with the article as it appeared. And, the most damning ones, damaging ones, obviously we're the ones I really focused, we recommended, let's do a full court press on these items, get that fixed and let them know, "Hey, this is just the first round, but these are the ones that are urgent and important that we want you to correct in your online story before," as you mentioned earlier. "More news outlets pick up your story because of the influence and credibility, this particular news outlet had on a national level."
- Yeah, I think that's a very smart strategy to pick, the fights and to not make it too complicated.
- [Jason] Yeah.
- Because as the subject, you know all the minutiae, all the little details of what's wrong and really it's just the big themes that are important. It's sometimes enough to say, "That story was wrong."
- [Jason] Yeah.
- And you don't have to go into all of, the gruesome details to get it pointed out-
- Yeah, if they said you were right-handed and you're really left-handed maybe that one's one will let go. But you know, if they said that, you were previous, your CEO was previously in prison and just come to find out, he's got the exact same name of someone else in the industry who went to prison, but it's not this same guy. Clearly let's do a little more homework and get that figured out so.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, for sure. Now there were two more things we wanted to make sure we had time to get to. And certainly in the episode notes, we'll put your contact information so that people can find a way to get ahold of you if, as they're consuming this and they're like, "Gosh, if I were Jason, I wish he would've asked these three questions." You know, we want to make sure that people have the ability to contact you and engage you and get your expert guidance on these topics. But you mentioned, you want to talk about, and I love this because it's important that we not only think of media as news, but we're also thinking about social media and web content. Because as you said, there's so many content creators out there, that there is starting to be I think a blurred line between who's truly journalism and who's just a content creator and their rights and responsibilities to be accurate. And so one thing we want to talk about is this anti-SLAPP statute. So could you give us kind of a, 92nd summary of that?
- Yeah, it's a statute that tries to protect, the rights of people to comment on matters of public concern. And so let's say that you have a consumer, has bought some product. They don't like the product and they start to go online and they start to criticize the product and the company. And let's say that they're wrong about what they're saying. They just didn't understand the product. And the, company wants to attack that person. They want to file a lawsuit. They get a lawyer to sue them, well that person can use the anti-SLAPP statute. And it's an acronym that stands for strategic lawsuits against public participation. The defendant, in that case, the person that's criticizing the company, can go against the company for all the fees that are incurred in defending and winning the lawsuit. Let's say that person was right, that they've had legitimate criticism and the law, and the case is dismissed. And sometimes it's not even dismissed on the basis of whether it's true or false, but there's not fault that there wasn't the, the company is treated as a public figure, can't prove actual malice.
- [Jason] Right.
- Case would be thrown out for lots of different reasons. That person is going to be able to recover the fees that they incurred. So the company will have lost not only the lawsuit, but sometimes very large pot of money, as well that they're gonna pay to that very person that was criticizing them. That's the anti-SLAPP statute.
- And maybe even losing in the court of public opinion, if they feel like this Goliath Corporation, is just picking on, some individual, but we also know there's some individuals who just have an axe to grind and they won't let it go. And they just keep going after and after and after the company with maybe no accountability, for fact truth, and being reasonable at least, I've seen those scenarios where a company has a heckler, for whatever reason. And sometimes the company can't figure out how, "How did we upset this person? 'Cause we don't see them ever buying from us. We don't see any business rule, we don't see us encroaching, on their turf or doing anything like that."
- Yeah, so as a general matter, those people are best left alone.
- Because you do not want to engage, with them. That just gives them more of a platform. It gives them really more credibility than they deserve. So it's what it usually does to leave those folks alone.
- That's good. And then you mentioned, this was also interesting to me, section 230 in Communications Decency Act, what's going on with that?
- So this was, it is a federal statute that protects interactive computer services like Facebook, Instagram, anyone that has a website is protected by this federal law. And it basically says that, the companies that operate those websites, they can't be sued for libel, slander or any sort of tortious activity, any publication that's put on their websites by others. So, that's why you see so much defamatory material out there today, is that this federal law, they felt it was important that the websites be able to allow others to post. The Congress thought it was very important that ordinary people should be able to post online. And the only way that they could persuade the companies to do that was to eliminate their liability. Well, what's happened as a consequence to that is Facebook has grown into this massive company. Other massive companies exist as a consequence. Right now, there's a huge question before Congress, as to whether that protection for these companies should be taken away. Nobody is quite sure how to deal with it. You see Donald Trump is wrestling with that. He's saying that these companies have too much power, right now to keep him off because not only does this statute allow them to let anyone post things online, it also allows the companies that operate these websites to take anything down that they want. They can decide what goes on, they're the gatekeepers, but they're so large and so powerful now that they can do things like influence elections. And that's, what's causing the statute to be revisited. I think we're gonna see some legislation at some point soon, we're starting to see that at state level as well, states are saying, "We ought to be." Florida has had a statute that was put in place by, governor DeSantis was arguing for that. It's been partially declared unconstitutional. It's up in the Eleventh Circuit. There's a lot of activity surrounding how to deal with defamatory materials posted on social media websites.
- You know, I'm a big believer that smart companies start self-governing when they can see around the corner that legislation is starting to happen or compliance is starting to happen. And, we see that, I just heard in the news today. And by the way, for the record, we're recording this on November 18th, 2021. And in the news today, I heard that Apple has started to create self repair kits for their iPhones, knowing that coming in the near future is gonna be some regulation requiring them to allow that to happen where you can't say, "Oh, you violated the terms of use and warranty because you tried to fix your own phone." And I guess they're finding that's unreasonable, and not a consumer friendly policy. So Apple has already started to market or is marketing or preparing to market, I guess they repair kit where you can repair, your own devices. So, they're kind of seeing around the corner that, "Hey, this is inherently gonna happen. So why don't we turn something that's a negative into an opportunity for us." And so I mentioned that, just kind of thinking out loud that I love it when companies are thinking that way. And so, is that why we're seeing, Facebook start to kind of self moderate, and pop up little, warnings or something saying, "This content is not necessarily accurate." Or you know and stuff like that?
- Oh, most definitely. You know, Facebook has been quite concerned about regulation, but it's not only, it's not only regulation of that type of direct regulation of content that might come into play or lifting of the immunity for libel and slander suits. But there's also antitrust that they have to be concerned about. And you're having any trust lawsuits filed all over the place, not only in the United States, but in Europe because the companies have become so big and so powerful that the competition that ordinarily would cause them to change the way in which they do business and to be more responsive to what consumers are saying, the competition just isn't there. Many people are saying that, and the US Justice Department is agreeing and is bringing lawsuits against Apple and Google, and all that. So it's, all of these things are starting to say, "Hey, wait a minute. We've allowed these very large companies to have so much control over information in the United States and in the world, maybe now is the time we need to look at changing the rules, with respect to defamation actions. We need to look at imposing more regulation, and maybe we need to even break up these companies, turn them into competitors so that consumers can decide what type of company that they want to do business with."
- Yeah, that's very good insight 'cause candidly, until we had this conversation, I just thought Facebook was kind of using its own political preferences, and you know, what do you call it? You know, worldview and kind of trying to prevent others from sharing what might not be mainstream, I guess, or whatever the case might be. So that's interesting to think about it through the lens of, they're trying to show that we can self-govern, we don't need, more compliance criteria or regulatory criteria, but I'm with you. I think it's coming. I think it's, I'd like to say it's coming swiftly, but nothing moves as quickly in government as we might like but, I don't see a way that it's not gonna happen.
- Yup, I think you're right about that.
- Yeah, good. Thomas if our audience wants to connect with you, are you on LinkedIn? How do you prefer that they reach out to you if they have a questions or might want to run their case by you.
- Yeah, I am on LinkedIn and they can always just Google my, law firm Gunster is online. We have a big website. There's a lot of information, about me there that they can find, a lot of information about the cases that I've handled. There's, also a service called Google Scholar, that compiles all sorts of different lawsuits. It's a really valuable tool. And I suggest to anyone interested in more, learning more about libel and slander, then go on Google Scholar and just type, "Libel and slander." It'll pull up hundreds and thousands of cases. Some of the cases that I've handled, you can find them by putting my name, in Google scholar. You'd find a whole group of different cases I've handled over the years. And it's a very educative, it's used mainly by lawyers, but it's a very consumer friendly sort of service to use.
- Wonderful, that's a good tip. We'll put some links to that content in the episode notes, as well as the link to your LinkedIn and your bio on the Gunster website. And Thomas, is there anything you think would be valuable to compliment our conversation today, please send those over to us and we'll be sure to add those links into the episode notes as well. But I wanna say thank you for sharing your smarts with us. This was a great conversation. I can't believe we're already out of time and I think we could keep going because to me, this is very fascinating, very impactful on, not only obviously consumers, but also on the corporations that, our agency represents. And again, I think it's fascinating just how, we've moved from a news media focused type practice that you have into now, there's, shared media and owned media and all these different platforms of which, brands and individuals can be collaborating or not collaborating and sharing content. So, everybody's a content creator. And as you know, the pace of content being developed is unlike anything we've seen before. And there's no signs that's gonna slow. So Thomas, thank you again for sharing. It's really been an honor to have you so appreciate that.
- [Thomas] Yeah, thank you.
- So this has been another great episode of On Top Of PR. If you found this helpful and you can think of a friend or colleague that would benefit from this, please share that with them. That's how we grow our audience space and we can keep serving you and providing you with great guests, just like we had today. If you have any thoughts, please be sure to reach out to us at podcast@ontopofpr.com. We would love to hear from you. And again, please share this episode with anybody you think would be valuable. We're working hard to keep help you stay On Top Of PR. And with that, I'm your host Jason Mudd, with Axia Public Relations signing off, thank you for tuning in.
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