As the Chinese media become more independent, public and Communist Party officials and even companies are filing successful defamation suits in the courts as a way to muffle opinion, said Benjamin Liebman, a law professor at Columbia University, speaking March 14 in the A.D. White House at Cornell University.

Ordinary people, celebrities and even restaurants getting bad reviews also are suing the media for defamation. But their suits are being used as a way to challenge state authority "because the media still represent the party-state to a large extent and have a huge influence on public opinion," said Liebman.

He was speaking to about 50 people at the lecture, "Innovation Through Intimidation: Defamation Litigation in China." The 2005-06 Clarke Lecture was sponsored by the Clarke Program in East Asian Law and Culture at the Cornell Law School.

And yet, said Liebman, the trend to sue the media in China is encouraging because people are resorting to the legal system to protect themselves in a country where, in the past, individual rights have too easily been sacrificed. And the fact that the media lose most of the defamation cases reflects the growing independence of the courts from the government.

Close ties to the Chinese Communist Party have given the Chinese media extensive power both to influence the courts and to resolve disputes, "power that has increased even as the media have become increasingly commercialized and begun to assert new autonomy," said Liebman. He is director of the Center for Chinese Legal Studies at Columbia Law School, where he studies the roles of China's media and courts, the developing legal profession and environmental law.

Since local officials and state entities have few tools to challenge media criticism, they turn to litigation to combat the media's influence, he said.

Liebman discussed in detail his recent analysis of 223 defamation cases in China's courts from 1995 to 2004. It shows that even though the Chinese media have far more authority and power in the Chinese legal system than even sometimes the courts do -- because the media are still largely the voice of the government -- these defamation cases suggest that courts are increasingly able to challenge the media's broader authority and influence.

Almost all media outlets in China, from the official Xinhua News Agency to racy local tabloids, have been sued at some point for defamation, though most cases are against smaller, local media outlets. Taking on the larger media entities is still too daunting for most Chinese, he said.

Plaintiffs prevail in 82 percent of cases brought in their home jurisdiction, Liebman said. And official and corporate plaintiffs are most likely to succeed.

Some critics even argue that existing law encourages frivolous defamation lawsuits because it overprotects individual rights at the expense of collective interests, said Liebman.

"Such litigation reflects friction between strong concerns for the reputations of individuals and an increasingly commercialized and difficult-to-control media," Liebman said, noting that to protect themselves, some newspapers have stopped reporting on defamation cases so readers won't get the idea that they, too, can drum up some sort of defamation lawsuit.

Given the courts' weak position in the Chinese system, Liebman said his study of the defamation cases shows that judges and courts are beginning to use their own authority to resist media scrutiny.

Graduate student Zheng Yang is a writer intern at the Cornell News Service.