The Medium: What Are Defamation Cases About?

The Supreme Court dealt with a relatively large number of defamation cases over the years. I was curious to see which media were most commonly involved. With the help of my trusted RA, Brandon Hobbs, we were able to create the above graph based on the analysis of 45 cases found on Westlaw.

(Caveats apply: we have not carefully vetted the data and so you should consider it preliminary and there are various judgment calls one must make. Still, I hope that would be useful to others. When a case involved two mediums, the case was counted twice.)

Row LabelsCount of Medium
Book2
Congressional Report1
Credit Report2
Leaflet2
Letter5
Magazine8
Newsletter1
Newspaper13
Other1
Pamphlet1
Press Release1
Radio2
Spreadsheet1
Television4
Testimony1
Verbal Statements5
Grand Total50

If interested, the data can be downloaded from here.

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