the paper's reference to New York Times Co. v. Sullivan is wholly inappropriate.

the NY Times case is limited to actions against the media brought by public officials (as the article notes), not by mere public figures as was the case here. the standard for liability in libel actions brought by public figures against the media is necessarily more stringent than it is for suits brought by mere public figures because of the essential role that media criticism and oversight of public officials plays in legitimating the U.S. system of representative government. that is, because public officials are electable by the people or directly appointed by those elected, the need for public scrutiny of these persons excuses factual errors not founded in actual malice.

the paper's reference to the NY Times case was inappropriate then because both (1) the suit was brought by a mere public figure, not a public official, and (2) even if the suit had been brought by a public official, the libel action in China fails to implicate either the First Amendment concerns raised in NY Times or concerns with media/public oversight of public officials directly accountable to the democratic process.

for a U.S. case more directly apposite to the suit alleged, see Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts (holding that, while news organizations were protected from liability when printing allegations about public officials, they may still be sued by public figures if the information they disseminate is recklessly gathered and unchecked).

I am not a lawyer, but I do like reading about the law. When anyone, especially a Chinese newspaper editorial, compares a verdict in the Chinese legal system to a landmark US freedom of speech case (1964), I'm going to do some digging. It doesn't take too much digging to start to pick this one apart. In fact, it's so entirely ass-backwards ridiculous that someone ought to smack the editor for being so incredibly audacious for trying to pull this one off. Sullivan was a public official who sued a private company and four private citizens, all black clergymen; he claimed they libeled him in an NYT advertisement. And in the lower court Sullivan, a cracker city commissioner for Montgomery, Alabama, won. The Supreme Court reversed the decision. Justice William Brennan writing for the Court stated, "[W]e consider this case against the background of a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials." The only thing that these two cases have in common is that they were legal suits that arose on the same planet. And that's where the road forks. Or, more accurately, splits, as in gymnasts landing in ways that always make me wince.

as is typical with many libel/slander/defamation cases, few people ask if the statements made were actually true

to the contrary bocaj, "truth" is a common and nearly-complete defense to these actions and is often, as such, at the center of the court's inquiry, at least under the common law.

i suspect, however, that truth likely offers some defense in Chinese actions as well, though i haven't reviewed the applicable statutes.