As an employee of an American newspaper in the late 20th century, I know what an ordinary person has to prove to nail me, and my newspaper, for libel. I also know what a ''public figure,'' anyone from a public official to someone else in the public eye, has to prove for the same purpose.
I know it's a lot harder for a public figure to get into my wallet, or my employer's, through the charge that I wrote something damaging and untrue.
I think that's a good thing. I also think it's an invitation for mischief.
Most journalists are responsible people, and most of the errors in their reporting result from sloppiness or ignorance rather than from malice. But they are also human, and when you give human beings a choice between an easy way and a hard way to do something, you shouldn't be surprised when some choose the easy way.
A lot of people who have read Kitty Kelley's ''unauthorized'' biography of Nancy Reagan, and I am not one, say Kelley chose the easy way. Because it's nearly impossible for a public figure like the former first lady to win a libel judgment, they say, it was easy for Kelley to make a number of factual allegations that aren't tied down well.
And it isn't just people who make their living writing who can benefit from current libel law, either. Washington Sen. Brock Adams says his old friend James Tupper, a physician, is another.
Tupper recently wrote a letter to potential contributors to Adams re-election campaign next year saying this: ''Three months after becoming a U.S. senator, Brock Adams drugged and sexually assaulted our daughter Kari in his Washington, D.C., home.''
The prosecutor's office didn't find enough evidence to charge Adams with a crime. That means he's innocent although only in the eyes of the law, which doesn't elect senators.
Nancy Reagan and Brock Adams are undeniably public figures. So if they were to sue their detractors to set the record straight, they would get some initial headlines but probably nothing else. Here's why.
First, the burden of proof would be on them. Second, they would have to prove what was written about them was untrue and has damaged them in some way, as any libel plaintiff must. And third, because they are public figures, they would have to go the extra step of proving it was written with ''actual malice.''
The legal definition of actual malice has little to do with the dictionary definition, but means that the publisher of false information is either aware it is false or has displayed reckless disregard for its truth or falseness.
Proving that isn't easy, and it's a good thing it isn't. Libel judgments are the kind of thing that not only drive the people on the losing end out of business but that also scare other people out of suggesting that the emperor's new suit looks a lot like his birthday suit.
The main reason for that is money. It costs a lot just to go to court. And it costs a lot more to lose. So everybody tries to avoid it.
And what's the alternative? None, really.
But there should be. Nancy Reagan, Brock Adams and all the rest of us who wonder if what their detractors say is true deserve some way to determine that, free of the expense and the near-eternity the legal system consumes today.
A few years back, a National News Council partly filled that role. Comprising journalists and press critics from the whole range of the political spectrum, the council investigated complaints of unfair press treatment and issued decisions on their justification. Its reports were published in the Columbia Journalism Review, a good, critical magazine that more people outside the press should read.
But the council eventually folded, primarily because some major news organizations had withdrawn their support.
To many of us in the press, that is even more embarrassing than the flood of errors with which we bury unsuspecting readers each day. And some press people have suggested pursuing establishment of a new mechanism to adjudicate charges of deliberate error by the press, and perhaps others.
The sooner that happens, the sooner it will become less easy for us to be sloppy in our treatment of public figures.
In other words, the sooner, the better.
