Comment by notsuoh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by notsuoh | Hacker News Reader

What a ride. Also this is from 2019.

Basically in 2017 a confidential source CS told the editor for Fast Company FC that some random investor Shervin Pishevar VC was arrested by London police in May 2017 for suspicion of sexual assault. VC then confirmed the arrest to FC.

FC published an article on this in late 2017 using a police report provided by CS. However the report turned out to be fabricated, and I guess London police dragged their feet on authenticating it before the FC article was published.

VC in 2019 subpoenas FC for docs related and to try to get the name of CS. FC complies mostly but doesn't give up the name of CS on principle.

Basically, VC admitted to being arrested for something, but FC received a fabricated report from CS, not the real one? Wild.

It's hard to know who is really in the right. At first glance this is VC trying to suppress press freedom, but if the report was fabricated, maybe VC is morally unblameworthy in seeking the report via the threat of legal action. Perhaps it depends on the delta between what really happened/was published/the real police report and the fabricated report.

>Also this is from 2019.

While the original article was from 2019, there are updates from February 18th and October 3rd this year.

Case close due to lack of evidence is certainly not the same as

> VC did something and admitted to it and admitted to being arrested for it

Oh yeah fair enough, I'll edit. VC did admit to being arrested by London Police according to the account, but who knows why they were arrested.

Journalists don't get to be some impenetrable wall defense to slander if the source is lying and forging documents.

Hmm I don't know, some protection exists per NY law according to the article. On one hand it doesn't sound like FC waited for the report to be authenticated, on the other hand who knows if London Police would ever do that, I don't know. I think it's fair to have the protection of this law or legal framework if a reporter has a reasonable belief that what they're reporting is accurate. But maybe it's a strict liability sort of deal, where it doesn't matter what the reporter believed but rather a factual question of whether the reporter published things that ended up being untrue, regardless of belief.

> Hmm I don't know, some protection exists per NY law according to the article.

Apparently not enough protection given that the judge has given an order for the source to be revealed.

https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.525673...

Apparently the standard here for piercing reporter's privilege is pretty simple:

“The qualified [reporter’s] privilege can be overcome only upon a clear and specific showing by the party seeking disclosure that the information is: (1) highly material and relevant to its action; (2) necessary or critical to the claim; and (3) not obtainable from other sources.”

My takeaway from this is that if you think it's likely that a statement you are making to a reporter will be the central subject of a legal action (e.g. if you want to slander someone to a reporter), it is not a safe move.

Of course, this doesn't mean that the investor will prevail overall. But it does seem like the confidential source will have to defend the truthfulness of the material they provided in court. IMO, this is not an entirely unreasonable outcome.

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