Byron White

“ I would suppose, for example that if Malcolm wrote that Masson said that he wore contact lenses, when he said nothing about his eyes or his vision, the trial judge would grant summary judgment for the defendants and dismiss the case. The same would be true if Masson had said "I was spoiled as a child by my Mother," whereas, Malcolm reports that he said "I was spoiled as a child by my parents." But if reasonable jurors could conclude that the deliberate misquotation was libelous, the case should go to the jury. ”

“ The falsehood, apparently, must be substantial; the reporter may lie a little, but not too much.
This standard is not only a less manageable one than the traditional approach, but it also assigns to the courts issues that are for the jury to decide. For a court to ask whether a misquotation substantially alters the meaning of spoken words in a defamatory manner is a far different inquiry than whether reasonable jurors could find that the misquotation was different enough to be libelous. In the one case, the court is measuring the difference from its own point of view ”

“ Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 84 S.Ct. 710, 11 L.Ed.2d 686 (1964) , "malice" means deliberate falsehood or reckless disregard for whether the fact asserted is true or false. Id., at 279-280, 84 S.Ct., at 725-726. As the Court recognizes, the use of quotation marks in reporting what a person said asserts that the person spoke the words as quoted. As this case comes to us, it is to be judged on the basis that in the instances identified by the Court, the reporter, Malcolm, wrote that Masson said certain things that she knew Masson did not say. ”