Project Veritas’ lawsuit came to be due to The New York Times’ labeling Project Veritas’ investigation into illegal ballot harvesting taking place in Minnesota during the 2020 election cycle as 'deceptive.'
The New York Times defended calling Project Veritas' Minnesota Ballot Harvesting videos 'deceptive' by arguing this was simply an 'unverifiable expression of opinion.'
Project Veritas pointed out this 'opinion' was printed in the news section of The New York Times and the Court agreed: 'if a writer interjects an opinion in a news article (and will seek to claim legal protections as opinion) it stands to reason that the writer should have an obligation to alert the reader ... that it is opinion.' The Times did not do so, and the Court found this troubling.
As I was reading the other day, "Hey, we were just inserting our unverifiable opinion into the narrative in order to tell you what to think. Don't shoot the messenger!"
Next step: depositions of the New York Times reporter and publisher.
2 comments:
It's a dangerous precedent to make free speech/free press contingent on the adjective.
Consider the "deadly insurrection" recently. No government authorities died on 6 January. One died in the hospital later, (Brian Sicknick) and two died of -- apparently -- Epstein's Disorder later still. It can be fairly claimed that the adjective "deadly" is false, even malicious. But it applies to the EVENT not any person with a reputation to be damaged.
Consider the decade-long suit of Michael Mann versus Mark Steyn. There are a lot of claims but the surviving one comes down to one word, one adjective: "fraudulent" -- which applies to a GRAPH, not to a person.
At least one SCOTUS decision about presidential powers hinged on the adjectives characterizing the exercise of his executive powers. If he considered a nation dangerous to ours, he can restrict travel. If dicta surrounding the formal orders reveals he considered the people from a nation as inferior, deadbeats, undesirable... then his motives are impure and his powers must be limited.
Watching this trend makes me unhappy.
The exemption from defamation for matters of opinion, however, has a long and fairly trouble-free history. Since 1974, the exemption turns on whether the statement is based on disclosed, non-defamatory facts. If so, there's no defamation even if the opinion is unreasonable or derogatory. If the supposedly underlying facts are undisclosed or implied, the question becomes what the listener/reader reasonably believed about whether the statement was intended as fact or opinion. That can be tricky for casual speech, but should be a no-brainer for a supposed news publication. Putting the statement in the news section instead of the opinion page is asking for big trouble, not to mention fact that the NYT should be ridiculed and excoriated even for contending that we should all simply understand that the drivel in its "news"articles is--of course! we assumed you knew!--nothing but opinion. In fact, the whole lawsuit was worth it just to get them to blurt that desperate nonsense out.
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