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Comment by huffmsa | Hacker News Reader

This is the same publication staring down a $250m libel lawsuit for their inability to fact check before publishing.

You expect too much from them.

That was dismissed recently, with a handy summary from the judge: The judge who oversaw the case, William O. Bertlesman, said in his dismissal, "The Court accepts Sandmann's statement that, when he was standing motionless in the confrontation with Phillips, his intent was to calm the situation and not to impede or block anyone. However, Phillips did not see it that way. He concluded that he was being 'blocked' and not allowed to 'retreat.' He passed these conclusions on to The Post. They may have been erroneous, but as discussed above, they are opinion protected by the First Amendment. And The Post is not liable for publishing these opinions."

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/27/media/washington-post-defamat...

The dismissal has issues and contradictions that several major lawyers and even other judges have pointed out, for example it was dismissed before any evidence was even adduced. Many of the claims the dismissal relies are on exactly the claims which would've been tested in court.

I highly recommend this video as a good overview of the issues: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSRVnvfD6Cc

It'll certainly be interesting to see where the appeal goes.

I need to read the opinion, but my initial inclination is that the judge should have let it go to trial.

Wins against newspapers for libel are extremely rare in First Amendment country.

But we've also never been at a point in history where a "respectable" publication can blast erroneous information out at the scale the Post did.

They might not lose the in a trial, but there needs to be reconning of some sort which breaks the assumed trust we've developed with antiquated publications.

You should consider the probability that in the past when newspapers deceived the public, the deception went largely unnoticed (at least at the time.) For instance, there is the time American newspapers almost single-handedly started a war with Spain.

Or, even worse, the infamous case of Pulitzer Prize winner and genocide denying communist sympathizer Walter Duranty using the New York Times to promote Soviet propaganda during the Holodomor. The damage there is still ongoing, despite the NYTs coming clean half a century later. When HBO's Chernobyl mentioned it by name, that was the first time many Americans ever heard the word.

FYI there is a memorial outside Union Station for visitors to Washington DC.

https://parkplanning.nps.gov/projectHome.cfm?projectID=39537

This is very, very incorrect. The term "yellow journalism" exists today because of really nasty work done in the late 1800s. Nobody at the Washington Post--or any other American newspaper today--is operating at nearly the same level of toxicity as William Randolph Hearst did then.

That is what the internet is for.

America loves its fake news, that's why Alex Jones was popular for years. He was able to lie freely about anything and anyone until finally libelling the Sandy Hook survivors was too much.

As other replies stated, the suit was dismissed and for the reasons stated. However, this is how journalists do hit pieces: find someone who will say what they want to say then quote them and thus is slander converted into "news". In this case they wanted to hold up for public hatred a kid who was just waiting for his bus. Why else would a kid waiting for a school bus be news?

Frivolous lawsuit, you mean. Perhaps you need to do some fact-checking.

My comments are merely opinion, fact checking not needed.

As was the claim that was made in Washington Post, according to the judge.

Edit: I initially said the claim was made by Washington Post, but it wasn’t their claim.

I'm not sure why the reply to you (from someone else) has vanished; perhaps that poster deleted it to redraft it. But your description of the case is, well, a little facile. This is the case of the Trump-supporting high school student who felt he was being unfairly portrayed in a confrontation with an American Indian activist in January, and indeed, it was dismissed last week.

https://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/9844670-181/judge-dismiss...

The original reply to you said it was dismissed because the statements accused of being defamatory were mostly opinions, which is true, but in context, they weren't even the Post's opinions: they were statements by others, including the activist, the Post was reporting as having been said. The statements by the activist that he felt threatened are protected because, as opinion, they're not subject to libel laws; the Post's reporting on the activist's statements appear to be accurate.

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