{"id":56820,"date":"2021-03-20T12:43:05","date_gmt":"2021-03-20T16:43:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=56820"},"modified":"2021-03-20T13:13:14","modified_gmt":"2021-03-20T17:13:14","slug":"supreme-court-judge-slams-the-new-york-slimes-for-actual-malice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=56820","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court Judge Slams The New York Slimes for “Actual Malice”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Supreme Court Judge Rules New York Times Used ‘Deceptive Disinformation’ To Smear Project Veritas<\/h1>\n

ZeroHedge.com<\/p>\n

A New York Supreme Court Judge last week excoriated the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0used “reckless disregard” and “acted with actual malice” when two of their reporters deceptively presented opinions as fact in several articles denigrating whistleblower organization\u00a0Project Veritas<\/em>.<\/p>\n

What the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0did, as you’ll see below, is similar to countless hit-pieces against Zero Hedge and others; using broad, unsupported brush strokes to slander their ideological opponents. We can only hope this sets new precedent for future defamation cases.<\/p>\n

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As The Epoch Times’ Zachary Stieber reports in detail<\/a>\u00a0(emphasis ours),\u00a0<\/em>writers for the New York Times\u00a0may have spread deceptive claims about the nonprofit journalism group\u00a0Project Veritas<\/a><\/strong>, a judge ruled this week.<\/p>\n

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The New York Times building is seen in New York City on April 15, 2020. (Chung I Ho\/The Epoch Times)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In stories from 2020 about Project Veritas videos,\u00a0writers Maggie Astor and Tiffany Hsu inserted sentences that were opinions despite the articles being billed as news<\/strong><\/em>, New York Supreme Court Justice Charles Wood said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf 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, including a court that may need to determine whether it is fact or opinion, that it is opinion,\u201d Wood wrote in\u00a0a 16-page decision<\/a>\u00a0denying the paper\u2019s request to dismiss\u00a0a lawsuit from Project Veritas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Articles that are the subject of this action called the Video\u00a0\u2018deceptive,\u2019 but\u00a0the dictionary definitions of \u2018disinformation\u2019 and \u2018deceptive\u2019 provided by defendants\u2019 counsel certainly apply to Astor\u2019s and Hsu\u2019s failure to note that they injected their opinions in news articles<\/strong>, as they now claim,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

At issue are five articles that Project Veritas alleges contained false and defamatory information. All five were about a 2020\u00a0video report<\/a>\u00a0from the journalism group on alleged illegal voting practices in Minnesota.<\/p>\n

In one of Astor\u2019s articles, she wrote:\u00a0\u201cMr. O\u2019Keefe and Project Veritas have a long history of releasing manipulated or selectively edited footage<\/strong>\u00a0purporting to show illegal conduct by Democrats and liberal groups.\u201d The source of the statement, and whether it is fact or opinion, is not clear, according to the judge.<\/p>\n

Hsu, meanwhile, wrote in part that\u00a0conservative publications \u201cmagnified the reach of a deceptive video<\/strong>\u00a0released last month by Project Veritas, a group run by the conservative activist James O\u2019Keefe,\u201d adding: \u201cThe video claimed without named sources or verifiable evidence that the campaign for Representative Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, was collecting ballots illegally.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cStating that the video is \u2018deceptive\u2019 and stating \u2018without verifiable evidence\u2019 in a factual way in a news article certainly presents the statement as fact<\/strong>, not opinion,\u201d Wood wrote in his decision. \u201cFurther, the Astor and Hsu Articles could be viewed as exposing Veritas to ridicule and harm to its reputation as a media source because the reader may read these news Articles, expecting facts, not opinion, and conclude that Veritas is a partisan zealot group, deceptively editing video, and presenting it as news.\u201d<\/p>\n

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James O\u2019Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas, is seen in Washington on Oct. 12, 2019. (Samira Bouaou\/The Epoch Times)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The judge said he reviewed the total context and tone of the stories and concluded\u00a0a reader could believe the statements were conveying facts about Project Veritas.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The New York Times had argued that statements describing the video as \u201cdeceptive\u201d and \u201cfalse\u201d were opinions incapable of being judged true or false.<\/p>\n

Lawyers for the paper also argued that even if the term \u201cdeceptive\u201d could be given objective meaning as a factual statement, writers demonstrated that the video was deceptive, citing other news outlets and so-called fact-checkers, such as Fox News and The Washington Post.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile this is a lengthy media list, polling does not decide truth nor speak to evidence, and Defendants have not met their burden to prove that the reporting by Veritas in the Video is deceptive,\u201d the judge said. Additionally, Veritas demonstrated in its complaint that\u00a0Astor did not likely in 63 minutes digest a report from a group that alleged the video was disinformation, review news reports on Minnesota ballot issues, view the video online, obtain a comment from Alex Stamos from the Stanford Internet Observatory, write her own article, submit the article to her editors, and have it posted online<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe facts submitted by Veritas could indicate more than standard, garden variety media bias and support a plausible inference of\u00a0actual malice<\/strong>,\u201d the judge wrote.<\/p>\n

A lawyer representing the New York Times referred The Epoch Times to the paper. A spokesperson for the paper didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Project Veritas said in a statement: \u201cThis ruling means Project Veritas will now be able to put New York Times reporter Maggie Astor and New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet under oath where they will be forced to answer our questions.\u00a0Project Veritas will record these depositions and expose them for the world to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

Follow Zachary on Twitter:\u00a0@zackstieber<\/a><\/em><\/div>\n
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