Misprints? Falun Gong & the First Amendment.

Does freedom of the press allow newspapers to print lies aimed at undermining a religion? Does freedom of religion allow believers to stop a newspaper's crusade against their faith?

The First Amendment guarantees both freedom of religion and freedom of the press. Sometimes these rights come into conflict, but rarely have they clashed so starkly as in the case of the Falun Gong meditation movement versus China Press, a Manhattan-based daily that caters to immigrants from Mainland China living in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, Chicago and other U.S. cities. China Press, which describes itself as "accurate" and "balanced," was founded in 1990 and has a circulation of nearly 120,000. In recent years, it has run numerous reports assailing Falun Gong.

Falun Gong first came to public attention in the United States in 1999. That was the year the Chinese government banned it after ten thousand members surprised officials by demonstrating for religious freedom outside government offices. At the time, the Chinese were trying to convince the world that Beijing would be a model site for the 2008 Olympics. Deeply embarrassed, the government declared Falun Gong Public Enemy Number 1. Members were imprisoned and, it is alleged, many were tortured. Not content to crush the movement at home, the People's Republic has tried to weaken Falun Gong in the United States. This is where China Press comes in.

Egged on by Beijing, powerful figures in the Chinese immigrant community have excoriated Falun Gong's small, steadfast group in the United States. Members claim that they have been excluded from Chinese-American parades, attacked physically, and subjected to an unrelenting smear campaign in the Chinese-language press. China Press, they say, has carried propaganda that claims Falun Gong is responsible for 1,700 deaths, 136 suicides, and 20 murders in China; and that Falun Gong members not only cut open their own stomachs but burn their own children to death. China Press, they say, has also carried charges that Falun Gong practitioners engage in "many" illegal activities here, and has advocated that the United States ban the organization.

Dozens of Falun Gong members are pursuing a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn that seeks to stop such attacks. The plaintiffs charge that China Press and (to a much lesser extent) the 181,000-circulation Sing Tao Daily have "acted as an unofficial mouthpiece for the Chinese government" and have intended to prevent Falun Gong members from exercising "their First Amendment privileges of association and expression." The case raises serious First Amendment issues, so serious that China Press has retained famed First Amendment expert Floyd Abrams, who counseled the New York Times in the landmark Pentagon Papers case.

Documents filed by Falun Gong in the lawsuit show that China Press's coverage made no effort to present the other side to the story. For example, Beijing's persecution of Falun Gong is amply described on the U.S. State Department's Web site's "Annual Report on International Religious Freedom." The State Department mentions "numerous credible reports that police and security personnel abused, tortured, and even killed Falun Gong practitioners." The report also notes that, on a broad scale, followers were forced to recant their beliefs or face torture, and that "many thousands of Falun Gong practitioners are serving extrajudicial administrative sentences in reeducation-through-labor camps."

Still, what does that have to do with Falun Gong members in the United States? In affidavits, the plaintiffs linked the negative press coverage to anti-Falun Gong street violence in Manhattan's Chinatown and to unraveling family ties. One Brooklyn woman, for example, said that the negative coverage had led her husband to demand that she renounce the meditation practice because he feared she would turn into a murderer.

Libel law, of course, protects expressions of opinion. However, it does not protect erroneous reporting entwined with the opinion. Has China Press reported dubious accusations against Falun Gong? Or has it merely engaged in what Abrams calls "robust debate"? Furthermore, Abrams believes, the news media have a legal right to be hard on a religion. "It is precisely in the area of criticism of religion that free-speech protections are greatest," he says, citing the 1940 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Cantwell v. Connecticut. That case involved a Jehovah's Witness, Jesse Cantwell, who took to the streets of a heavily Catholic neighborhood in New Haven in 1938 with a recording attacking the Catholic Church as an instrument of Satan. Two Catholic men accepted his invitation to listen to the record and were tempted to respond with violence unless Cantwell ceased his tirade. Cantwell left, but was arrested and later convicted of inciting others to breach the peace. The Court overturned the conviction, noting that exaggeration and vilification are often part of debates over religion or politics. "The people of this nation have ordained ... that, in spite of the probability of excesses and abuses, these liberties are, in the long view, essential to enlightened opinion," the Court found.

Another hurdle facing Falun Gong is that even if it can prove the reports about the movement in China Press were false and distorted, individual members still have to establish that they were personally damaged by the newspaper reports. Since the articles did not attack the individual plaintiffs, Abrams remarked in an interview, there is no basis for the lawsuit because "it doesn't relate to anyone."

Sam P. Israel, an attorney for the Falun Gong members, disputes that. He notes that Falun Gong practitioners in the United States are a small group, and that readers will inevitably associate what they read with individual practitioners.

Perhaps Abrams's strongest point, however, is that the lawsuit attempts to stop the newspaper from printing attacks in the future. Drawing on his experience in the Pentagon Papers case, Abrams argues that imposing prior restraint on China Press would set a dangerous precedent. Still, though prior restraint sounds like a bad idea, one can understand why Falun Gong would seek to muzzle China Press: the plaintiffs say there is an undercurrent of violence in the paper's coverage. One article likened Falun Gong members to Branch Davidians, while another quoted a powerful Chinatown leader saying Falun Gong members are like "mice crossing the street, everyone yells to hit it."

It's the party line. When a Chinese diplomat spoke at China Press's tenth anniversary celebration, he quoted then-President Jiang Zemin praising the paper, and immediately launched into an attack on Falun Gong. In an apparent reference to Waco, he added, "We all know how mercilessly the United States dealt with the cults on its own soil, yet, some American politicians have chosen to ignore all this and insisted on embracing this evil cult group in China."

In court papers, the attorney for Falun Gong likened China Press to a newspaper controlled by Germany during the 1930s--one that constantly accused Jews of being part of a cult that committed random acts of murder, kidnapping, and child abuse, and that called for Jews to be harassed and barred from parading. When asked about that, Abrams responded that such a paper would be legally protected here: "We're the only country in the world that protects hate speech." Then he added, "You have to decide if you believe in the First Amendment or not."

Paul Moses teaches journalism at Brooklyn College/CUNY.