After consulting legal community opinion, Kao proposed revisions that included adopting the principle of "malicious intent" as determined by the US Supreme Court in its landmark 1964 decision "New York Times v. Sullivan." In that case the court ruled that to be found not guilty journalists need only to do a reasonable job of gathering evidence and obtaining assurances of truth and show no malicious intent to destroy someone's character.
高惠宇參考法學界意見，提出修正版本，建議參考美國聯邦最高法院在一九六四年為保障新聞自由而創出「實質惡意」原則，也是說記者只要合理查證，「確信為真實」，並無毀損他人名譽之惡意，就不應被定罪。