OK, I know that in the case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court ruled that for public officials, in order to prove a libel case, you must prove malice or a reckless disregard for the truth.
However, this DOES NOT apply to private figures, so the requirement for them is that it be false and cause damage.
For example, in an actual case from a journalism class that I took, a local paper got a wedding announcement saying that person A was marrying person B, and that they had a 2 year old child, and published this.
It turned out to be wrong. Persons A&B had a said 2 year old, but person A was marrying person C, A&B having broken up at some time in the past.
The wedding announcement was clearly wrong, and it clearly caused embarrassment and cast a pall over A&C’s wedding, so when contacted by A&C’s lawyer, they settled for a few grand, and the paper established a new policy to confirm with the couple before publishing a wedding announcement.
If there is an error on my credit report, it is almost certainly going to damage me, and it most certainly has been published, so why am I not reading about libel suits against the credit rating companies?
After all, most of us are private induhviduals under the criteria of Sullivan, so it would seem that there would be a case.
UPDATE:
It appears that the Fair Credit Reporting Act and its successor the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act preempt state libel and defamation laws. (quick Google search)
I’m thinking about calling my Congressman to get this changed, this creates a largely unaccountable and Orwellian arrangement.