HOW MASSON V. NEW YORKER HAS SHAPED THE LEGAL LANDSCAPE OF NARRATIVE JOURNALISM KATHY ROBERTS FORDE* The interpretation of the New York Times actual malice standard by the Supreme Court of the United States in Masson v. New Yorker Magazine has been shaping the legal landscape in which narrative journalism is practiced for more than a decade. In nineteen of the twenty-one federal court and state high court defamation cases citing Masson that have involved substantive issues relevant to narrative journalism, the case contributed to clear victories for defendants. As in Masson itself, disputed questions of material fact sent the remaining two cases to juries for resolution. Overall, Masson has been used consistently to uphold First Amendment protections for writers. When author Janet Malcolm quoted psychoanalyst Jeffrey Masson in a two-part New Yorker essay 1 as calling himself “an in- tellectual gigolo,” 2 she became a reluctant player in a modern-day morality play called the libel lawsuit. In Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, Inc., we were reminded that, even in our im- age-saturated culture, the written word is powerful. Claiming that he had never called himself an intellectual gigolo, Masson accused Malcolm of defamation by fabricating or misleadingly altering six quotations she attributed to him. 3 Malcolm’s journalistic tech- 10 COMM. L. & POL’Y 101–133 (2005) Copyright © 2005, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. *Ph.D. student and Park Fellow, School of Journalism and Mass Commu- nication, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 1 Janet Malcolm, The Annals of Scholarship: Trouble in the Archives,NEW YORKER, Dec. 5, 1983, at 59; Dec. 12, 1983, at 60. 2 Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, Inc., 501 U.S. 496, 502 (1991). 3 Id.