Potter Stewart

“ More than 150 citizens came to hear how the new City Council would respond to pressure by a local developer for higher density zoning on a large tract of land in exchange for uncontested consummation of the sale of a Greenbelt senior high school site to the Board of Education at the Council meeting Monday night. ”

“ For the reasons that follow, we hold that the imposition of liability on such a basis was constitutionally impermissible-that as a matter of constitutional law, the word 'blackmail' in these circumstances was not slander when spoken, and not libel when reported in the Greenbelt News Review.
There can be no question that the public debates at the sessions of the city council regarding Bresler's negotiations with the city were a subject of substantial concern to all who lived in the community. The debates themselves were heated, as debates about controversial issues usually are. ”

“ For the instructions to the jury in this case permitted a finding of liability under an impermissible constitutional standard, whichever status Bresler might be considered to occupy. In his charge to the members of the jury, the trial jduge repeatedly instructed them that Bresler could recover if the petitioners' publications had been made with malice or with a reckless disregard of whether they were true or false. ”