Blake Lively- Jason Baldoni and NYT - False Light claims

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:The online article also has been edited to include statements made by FLAA and Freedman, “post publication”. It’s quite sketch. I remember the original article also mentioning that it was based on hours of interviews with a Blake Lively?

That's not even remotely sketch. It's normal for a paper to add statements made after publication and note that they were received post publication. The Freedman statement is especially ridiculous because he also made a pre-publications statement when Twohey reached out to all the Wayfarer parties for comment -- Freedman was well aware the article was being published and knew from the detailed emails Twohey sent his clients what the article would say. That Freedman then decided to append his prior statement is his prerogative but is not shady on the part of the Times.

Flaa wasn't contacted prior to publication but she is mentioned in the article. She issued a statement saying that she had not been in contact with Baldoni's people when she posted her video. Again, this is normal and standard. The article didn't accuse Flaa of anything and Flaa wasn't being sued. It just mentioned her video because that was a big part of the negative press for Lively in August.

Have y'all never read newspapers before or something? None of this is sketchy. It's just journalism.

I think it's both sketchy and standard, lol. And annoying af. These statements are in the NYT article:
"On Saturday, however, after this article was published, the talent agency William Morris Endeavor stopped representing Mr. Baldoni, said Ari Emanuel, chief executive of Endeavor, the agency’s parent company."
"After publication of this article, Ms. Flaa on Sunday contacted The Times and said she had not participated in any orchestrated effort to harm Ms. Lively’s reputation. "

They couldn't have been commenting on "this" article, because "this" article includes their statements, which obviously hadn't been submitted when the original article was published! So obviously, what I'm reading isn't THE article that they are suing for. This drives me insane, because what else did they quietly change? We saw this recently with The Hollywood Reporter and the Jenny Slate complaint. Back in the day, newspapers used to be publish the corrections at the bottom of the article and tell you exactly what they changed. All this article says is: "A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 23, 2024 of the New York edition with the headline: Alleged Effort To Strike Back At Star Actress."

There is a history here if anyone is interested to see the oldest archived version: https://archive.is/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/21/business/media/blake-lively-justin-baldoni-it-ends-with-us.html

You're being pedantic. Yes those are comments on "this" article because it is substantial the same article with the addition of those statement.

I do not believe the NYT made any changes to the online edition of the article that are not highlighted as edits. Yes, the Hollywood Reporter played fast and loose with this recently -- other outlets do as well. The NYT does not, that's one of the reasons they are generally trusted more than other outlets. If they made any changes, they will be documented and highlighted, I have no doubt. I have not seen a single indication that the NYT changed the text of the article after publication without drawing attention to it, as with adding the post-publication statements.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The online article also has been edited to include statements made by FLAA and Freedman, “post publication”. It’s quite sketch. I remember the original article also mentioning that it was based on hours of interviews with a Blake Lively?

That's not even remotely sketch. It's normal for a paper to add statements made after publication and note that they were received post publication. The Freedman statement is especially ridiculous because he also made a pre-publications statement when Twohey reached out to all the Wayfarer parties for comment -- Freedman was well aware the article was being published and knew from the detailed emails Twohey sent his clients what the article would say. That Freedman then decided to append his prior statement is his prerogative but is not shady on the part of the Times.

Flaa wasn't contacted prior to publication but she is mentioned in the article. She issued a statement saying that she had not been in contact with Baldoni's people when she posted her video. Again, this is normal and standard. The article didn't accuse Flaa of anything and Flaa wasn't being sued. It just mentioned her video because that was a big part of the negative press for Lively in August.

Have y'all never read newspapers before or something? None of this is sketchy. It's just journalism.

You don’t think it’s a problem that they said the Flaa video, the video that caused the most backlash against Blake, and went the most viral during the whole debacle, was part of the smear campaign, only to come out later and be like Oopsie. She wasn’t part of the campaign.

Because I definitely see that that is a problem I agree that it is journalism today, which is why the New York Times is hemorrhaging readers.

They didn't say it was part of the smear campaign. They accurately reported that Flaa had also weighed in on the Johnny Depp trial (she did) and that Nathan had run PR for Depp during that trial (she did). If it turns out this is just a big coincidence, it's a crazy coincidence.

In any case, Flaa is not suing the NYT. If she does, they can litigate that mention.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:jesus people it was an article reporting on a legal filing, they don't need to litigate the case internally and take testimony from both sides and determine whether the plaintiff will win before reporting on it. how do you think news gets reported? they asked his view and they reported his denial. get over it. again times will win this MTD 100% as they should

When you are labeling someone a sexual harasser the bar needs to be higher. I agree with you that they will probably win legally, but I don’t think this helped the paper or corporate media and both aren’t doing so great right now.

I don't think they labelled him a sexual harasser. The response to the article was really more focused on the PR angle because of the texts. Even the article was mostly focused on the PR angle because, again, they had the texts. If someone read it and thought "well 100% the sexual harassment in the complaint happened exactly as described," that is a problem with a reader being overzealous, not with the the reporting. Because that's not what they said. Everything about the SH was was couched as an allegation. Only the PR activity in the texts was asserted as something that happened, because the texts were real.

The first few paragraphs of the article (emphasis mine)

Last summer, as the release of “It Ends With Us” approached, Justin Baldoni, the director and a star of the film, and Jamey Heath, the lead producer, hired a crisis public relations expert.

During shooting, Blake Lively, the co-star, had complained that the men had repeatedly violated physical boundaries and made sexual and other inappropriate comments to her. Their studio, Wayfarer, agreed to provide a full-time intimacy coordinator, bring in an outside producer and put other safeguards on set. In a side letter to Ms. Lively’s contract, signed by Mr. Heath, the studio also agreed not to retaliate against the actress.

But by August, the two men, who had positioned themselves as feminist allies in the #MeToo era, expressed fears that her allegations would become public and taint them, according to a legal complaint that she filed Friday. It claims that their P.R. effort had an explicit goal: to harm Ms. Lively’s reputation instead.

Her filing includes excerpts from thousands of pages of text messages and emails that she obtained through a subpoena. These and other documents were reviewed by The New York Times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/21/business/media/blake-lively-justin-baldoni-it-ends-with-us.html

They come out with a bang, just being completely 100% factually wrong. They say they agreed to provide an intimacy coordinator. When we find out later, justin hired the intimacy coordinator during reproduction, texted Blake, I’m really excited about the intimacy coordinator I hired! And then proceeded to set up a meeting with her. To which Blake said, I’m good. I’ll wait till I get on set.

Did you gather any of that from this first paragraph or did it look like she had to beg them for an intimacy coordinator? I’m sorry the article was really bad and I understood why he’s suing, even if he doesn’t win. This has not been good for the New York Times even if they prevail legally, and frankly, this is not been good for Megan, and she has weakened her reputation and made it harder for future women who want to come forward.

None of what they write is factually wrong. Regarding the intimacy coordinator, it says they agreed to hire a full-time intimacy coordinator, not that they didn't have one at all before. Even though they had an IC hired before the hiatus, it's not clear that she'd spent a single day on set, be abuse none of the scheduled sex scenes had been filmed yet.

And Blake saying in preproduction she was fine to meet the IC on set doesn't negate the truth of that. It may add context, but that's what a subsequent article was for

Also, if you read the emails Twohey sent to Wayfarer prior to publishing, she includes a ton of detail for verification. Had they wanted to, at that time, they could have offered the context you are talking about. They chose not to -- they chose to offer a single, vague paragraph via Bryan Freedman denying everything entirely and with a bunch of angry invective about Blake. And they made no indication that they had more specific context or that they wanted to provide it. They didn't even say "look, these situations are complex and your reporting is inaccurate, but we need more time to explain how," which might have changed how they framed it. They chose not to.. The allegation that the story was unfairly one sided doesn't work for me because Wayfarer chose to claim up and issue a flat denial immediately. They didn't take their chance to provide another side until they filed their lawsuit, which was duly reported as well.

OK, except there’s no such thing as a full-time intimacy coordinator. They come on days when there are intimate scenes filmed. Do you really think an intimacy coordinator just hangs out on that all the time waiting in case they are needed? It’s just not how these things are done. The article and the complaint implied there was no intimacy coordinator until Blake complained. That was obviously proven to be false.

Blake's 17-point list, which was part of NYT reporting requested to have a full time intimacy coordinator on set to accompany Blake at all times. Because part of her allegation was that Baldoni and Heath added intimacy to scenes not scripted that way, this was needed to protect her. And Wayfarer agreed to provide this.

You can argue that was not necessary, but it's factually accurate. And no, it doesn't "imply" no IC had been hired at all. It just says that Blake requested and the studio agreed to provide a full time IC. Again, that is accurate.

Had Wayfarer wanted to clarify that they engaged an IC in preproduction, they could have done so when specifically asked prior to publication. They didn't. What do you want the NYT to do?

Implication was that there was no I see. All over the Internet people were like what there was no I see that standard now? They have only implied there wasn’t one in it was deceptive. You can argue all you want, but people were confided.

The fact that princess Blake needed an intimacy coordinator on set to protect her at all times is absolutely ludicrous. I actually think that is going to work against her as an unreasonable demand. That is in no way standard and I’ve never heard of any other actors asking for that.

I am waiting for them to come out and blame it on severe postpartum depression. Blake seemed incredibly paranoid and thought that every man on that set was out to get her.

Look, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this word salad is due to voice-to-text on your phone. Next time try typing it out.

The point is that the NYT requested comment from Wayfarer and outlined Lively's allegations and they chose not to say anything like "we hired an IC before production began." That's on them. The NYT can only report what it knows. They did their due diligence. Lively alleged harassment and requested a full time IC, and Wayfarer agreed to provide one. If Wayfarer had more info about the IC, they should have told the NYT when they asked. You can't decline to comment on a situation when you know a newspaper is about to report about it and then say "hey you didn't include additional context that we had access to but failed to provide even when you asked" and call it defamation.

Again, as I said before, legally, you may be right. But it was just not the right thing to do. For Harvey Weinstein, they were working on the story for years, and they had several conference calls with him over the course of months to get his side of the story. It didn’t end up helping him, but that’s how they treated it. I’m just confused as to why one actress coming forward led to them only getting her side. I know that she’s famous and she was willing to put her name out there, but one actress alleging a bad experience on set, when we all clearly saw the power that she had on the film, should have tipped then off that there was more to the story.

Look you saw what happened as well as I did. This article came out and for about 10 days around Christmas time Blake lively was having the upswing of her life. Everyone was on her side. Then 10 days later when Justin’s team was able to put out just a fraction of their side of the story, it was radio silence from Hollywood and all of her supporters. I just don’t understand if they started working on this in October, why they couldn’t have given his team more time. I actually still think it would’ve been a really groundbreaking and huge article with more nuance. And I think it probably would’ve helped Blake too, because she had the 10 days, but look at her now.

The Weinstein comparison doesn't hold up. People only make this comparison because of Twohey. Weinstein took a long time to report because none of the women wanted to go on the record. They had to wait until there were enough women making allegations that they could convince them to come forward together -- no one wanted to be the lone accuser. Lively was not only willing to go on the record, she was filing a lawsuit. So they didn't have to wait around like they did with Weinstein. Also due to the lawsuit, they couldn't wait to publish because once the lawsuit was published, they'd have lost the story.

Also, they didn't interview Weinstein multiple times over the course of months. I believe they had one or maybe two conference calls with him prior to publication, and they absolutely waited to initiate those calls until the rest of the story was pinned down. This is standard practice. You don't give an accused days or weeks or months to spin up a cover story. You get all your details nailed and then you present them to the accused for comment prior to publication. You give them enough time to comment fully but not enough time to (1) leak it in advance to another outlet they think will be more favorable, or (2) invent a cover story.

Freedman DID leak the story to TMZ before NYT could publish, actually. Even with the short lead time, he still managed to leak the complaint to another outlet between the time NYT asked for comment and when the published. Newspapers know people will play these games and you have to time requests for comment to protect your story so that the time you spent reporting doesn't get lost.

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You can argue all you want. Twoey locked down her socials and the public is largely on Baldoni’s side and thinks the times article is trash. But yes, they likely aren’t in legal trouble.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:jesus people it was an article reporting on a legal filing, they don't need to litigate the case internally and take testimony from both sides and determine whether the plaintiff will win before reporting on it. how do you think news gets reported? they asked his view and they reported his denial. get over it. again times will win this MTD 100% as they should

When you are labeling someone a sexual harasser the bar needs to be higher. I agree with you that they will probably win legally, but I don’t think this helped the paper or corporate media and both aren’t doing so great right now.

I don't think they labelled him a sexual harasser. The response to the article was really more focused on the PR angle because of the texts. Even the article was mostly focused on the PR angle because, again, they had the texts. If someone read it and thought "well 100% the sexual harassment in the complaint happened exactly as described," that is a problem with a reader being overzealous, not with the the reporting. Because that's not what they said. Everything about the SH was was couched as an allegation. Only the PR activity in the texts was asserted as something that happened, because the texts were real.

The first few paragraphs of the article (emphasis mine)

Last summer, as the release of “It Ends With Us” approached, Justin Baldoni, the director and a star of the film, and Jamey Heath, the lead producer, hired a crisis public relations expert.

During shooting, Blake Lively, the co-star, had complained that the men had repeatedly violated physical boundaries and made sexual and other inappropriate comments to her. Their studio, Wayfarer, agreed to provide a full-time intimacy coordinator, bring in an outside producer and put other safeguards on set. In a side letter to Ms. Lively’s contract, signed by Mr. Heath, the studio also agreed not to retaliate against the actress.

But by August, the two men, who had positioned themselves as feminist allies in the #MeToo era, expressed fears that her allegations would become public and taint them, according to a legal complaint that she filed Friday. It claims that their P.R. effort had an explicit goal: to harm Ms. Lively’s reputation instead.

Her filing includes excerpts from thousands of pages of text messages and emails that she obtained through a subpoena. These and other documents were reviewed by The New York Times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/21/business/media/blake-lively-justin-baldoni-it-ends-with-us.html

They come out with a bang, just being completely 100% factually wrong. They say they agreed to provide an intimacy coordinator. When we find out later, justin hired the intimacy coordinator during reproduction, texted Blake, I’m really excited about the intimacy coordinator I hired! And then proceeded to set up a meeting with her. To which Blake said, I’m good. I’ll wait till I get on set.

Did you gather any of that from this first paragraph or did it look like she had to beg them for an intimacy coordinator? I’m sorry the article was really bad and I understood why he’s suing, even if he doesn’t win. This has not been good for the New York Times even if they prevail legally, and frankly, this is not been good for Megan, and she has weakened her reputation and made it harder for future women who want to come forward.

None of what they write is factually wrong. Regarding the intimacy coordinator, it says they agreed to hire a full-time intimacy coordinator, not that they didn't have one at all before. Even though they had an IC hired before the hiatus, it's not clear that she'd spent a single day on set, be abuse none of the scheduled sex scenes had been filmed yet.

And Blake saying in preproduction she was fine to meet the IC on set doesn't negate the truth of that. It may add context, but that's what a subsequent article was for

Also, if you read the emails Twohey sent to Wayfarer prior to publishing, she includes a ton of detail for verification. Had they wanted to, at that time, they could have offered the context you are talking about. They chose not to -- they chose to offer a single, vague paragraph via Bryan Freedman denying everything entirely and with a bunch of angry invective about Blake. And they made no indication that they had more specific context or that they wanted to provide it. They didn't even say "look, these situations are complex and your reporting is inaccurate, but we need more time to explain how," which might have changed how they framed it. They chose not to.. The allegation that the story was unfairly one sided doesn't work for me because Wayfarer chose to claim up and issue a flat denial immediately. They didn't take their chance to provide another side until they filed their lawsuit, which was duly reported as well.

I read I believe it was 9:46 PM was when the Baldoni team was given this information and they were given 12 hours to respond, and the article published at 10 AM the next morning.

You might also recall the article was published on a holiday weekend. It’s quite possible at 10 o’clock on a Friday night people aren’t actively checking their emails. They could have found out they needed to respond the next morning. We now know they had been working with Blake’s team for months considering there was meta data back to October 31.

There’s really no way to justify this. The times looks terrible here.

Wayfarer has multiple PR people (including a "crisis" specialist) at their disposal, and had already retained Bryan Freedman. And Abel provided a statement from Freedman just a couple hours after the requests for comment went out (they sent separate requests to everyone involved, but Abel sent the Freedman response on behalf of all parties, including Jed Wallace). They could have requested an interview, provided some of their own documentation, offered some of the context they'd include in their lawsuit later, etc.

Wayfarer was prepared for those requests for comment and this is how they chose to respond. They did not even use their full time, they sent a quick response and that was it.

BUT before the NYT published, there is a lot of evidence, that Bryan Freedman personally leaked a copy of the CRD complaint to TMZ. TMZ actually published the complaint before the NYT article le went live (this is likely why the NYT chose to publish at 10am instead of noon as they planned -- they were being scooped by a tabloid in a story they'd been working on for weeks). The TMZ story quotes Freedman directly. That TMZ article then got used as the source for a bunch of other outlets reporting on the complaint that day.

So Freedman had time to leak the CRD complaint to TMZ and provide a statement to them, but not to provide clarifying info to the NYT's request for comment. Explain again how this was unfair to Wayfarer?

Does anyone know the exact timeline on this? When was the CRD complaint filed? How much advanced notice would Wayfarer have had between the time they were aware of the contents of the CRD complaint and the publication of the NYT article?

To be clear, I don't think this matters too much to the defamation claim, I'm just interested in the Wayfarer/Freedman strategy. It seems at first glance like issuing the blanket denial (the bare minimum you could do) wasn't a great strategy but is understandable if you receive this bombshell article late Friday night with an expectation to respond Friday morning. That simply isn't enough time to litigate the entire complaint.

What they could have done, maybe, is asked for more time, then bulleted out 3 or 4 of Wayfarer's strongest points and e-mailed those to the NYT, and that might have given the NYT pause. For example, I think many people found the dance scene compelling, so what if they had attached that clip to their response with a brief narrative of how Lively's complaint mischaracterizes it. Plus point out the OBGYN actor has acting credentials and an imdb page. Plus explain that a full-time IC isn't standard, and that they did engage an IC from the start, and that Lively declined an initial meeting (which I don't think is a big problem for Lively, but it would appear to show some good faith on Wayfarer's part in including her).

It takes time to pull those things, so did Wayfarer know about the complaint well enough in advance that they'd already have been preparing these defenses?
Do we think if they had done something like that instead of a basic "we deny everything," that NYT would have put off the story and then done some conference calls with Baldoni the way they did with Wayfarer?
Would it even be a good idea for Freedman and Wayfarer to essentially give up some of their defenses to the legal complaint to the NYT, who would surely give them to Lively for comment? This would have given Lively a heads up to edit her civil complaint before filing (along the lines of how she amended her complaint after seeing the video) so I'm thinking maybe the better strategy was what Wayfarer did, to issue the flat denial, and then sue, even if the defamation claim isn't very strong.

I'm really not sure what the better strategy is... try to lay out your defenses (thereby tipping off Lively to what you have) but in an attempt to get the article killed and save your reputation... or let NYT publish and then sue later... maybe the latter was better because Lively eventually would have filed her civil lawsuit which would be public so everything would come out in the press anyway.

[Anonymous]

Do we think if they had done something like that instead of a basic "we deny everything," that NYT would have put off the story and then done some conference calls with Baldoni the way they did with Wayfarer?

Sorry, meant with Weinstein.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:jesus people it was an article reporting on a legal filing, they don't need to litigate the case internally and take testimony from both sides and determine whether the plaintiff will win before reporting on it. how do you think news gets reported? they asked his view and they reported his denial. get over it. again times will win this MTD 100% as they should

When you are labeling someone a sexual harasser the bar needs to be higher. I agree with you that they will probably win legally, but I don’t think this helped the paper or corporate media and both aren’t doing so great right now.

I don't think they labelled him a sexual harasser. The response to the article was really more focused on the PR angle because of the texts. Even the article was mostly focused on the PR angle because, again, they had the texts. If someone read it and thought "well 100% the sexual harassment in the complaint happened exactly as described," that is a problem with a reader being overzealous, not with the the reporting. Because that's not what they said. Everything about the SH was was couched as an allegation. Only the PR activity in the texts was asserted as something that happened, because the texts were real.

The first few paragraphs of the article (emphasis mine)

Last summer, as the release of “It Ends With Us” approached, Justin Baldoni, the director and a star of the film, and Jamey Heath, the lead producer, hired a crisis public relations expert.

During shooting, Blake Lively, the co-star, had complained that the men had repeatedly violated physical boundaries and made sexual and other inappropriate comments to her. Their studio, Wayfarer, agreed to provide a full-time intimacy coordinator, bring in an outside producer and put other safeguards on set. In a side letter to Ms. Lively’s contract, signed by Mr. Heath, the studio also agreed not to retaliate against the actress.

But by August, the two men, who had positioned themselves as feminist allies in the #MeToo era, expressed fears that her allegations would become public and taint them, according to a legal complaint that she filed Friday. It claims that their P.R. effort had an explicit goal: to harm Ms. Lively’s reputation instead.

Her filing includes excerpts from thousands of pages of text messages and emails that she obtained through a subpoena. These and other documents were reviewed by The New York Times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/21/business/media/blake-lively-justin-baldoni-it-ends-with-us.html

They come out with a bang, just being completely 100% factually wrong. They say they agreed to provide an intimacy coordinator. When we find out later, justin hired the intimacy coordinator during reproduction, texted Blake, I’m really excited about the intimacy coordinator I hired! And then proceeded to set up a meeting with her. To which Blake said, I’m good. I’ll wait till I get on set.

Did you gather any of that from this first paragraph or did it look like she had to beg them for an intimacy coordinator? I’m sorry the article was really bad and I understood why he’s suing, even if he doesn’t win. This has not been good for the New York Times even if they prevail legally, and frankly, this is not been good for Megan, and she has weakened her reputation and made it harder for future women who want to come forward.

None of what they write is factually wrong. Regarding the intimacy coordinator, it says they agreed to hire a full-time intimacy coordinator, not that they didn't have one at all before. Even though they had an IC hired before the hiatus, it's not clear that she'd spent a single day on set, be abuse none of the scheduled sex scenes had been filmed yet.

And Blake saying in preproduction she was fine to meet the IC on set doesn't negate the truth of that. It may add context, but that's what a subsequent article was for

Also, if you read the emails Twohey sent to Wayfarer prior to publishing, she includes a ton of detail for verification. Had they wanted to, at that time, they could have offered the context you are talking about. They chose not to -- they chose to offer a single, vague paragraph via Bryan Freedman denying everything entirely and with a bunch of angry invective about Blake. And they made no indication that they had more specific context or that they wanted to provide it. They didn't even say "look, these situations are complex and your reporting is inaccurate, but we need more time to explain how," which might have changed how they framed it. They chose not to.. The allegation that the story was unfairly one sided doesn't work for me because Wayfarer chose to claim up and issue a flat denial immediately. They didn't take their chance to provide another side until they filed their lawsuit, which was duly reported as well.

OK, except there’s no such thing as a full-time intimacy coordinator. They come on days when there are intimate scenes filmed. Do you really think an intimacy coordinator just hangs out on that all the time waiting in case they are needed? It’s just not how these things are done. The article and the complaint implied there was no intimacy coordinator until Blake complained. That was obviously proven to be false.

Blake's 17-point list, which was part of NYT reporting requested to have a full time intimacy coordinator on set to accompany Blake at all times. Because part of her allegation was that Baldoni and Heath added intimacy to scenes not scripted that way, this was needed to protect her. And Wayfarer agreed to provide this.

You can argue that was not necessary, but it's factually accurate. And no, it doesn't "imply" no IC had been hired at all. It just says that Blake requested and the studio agreed to provide a full time IC. Again, that is accurate.

Had Wayfarer wanted to clarify that they engaged an IC in preproduction, they could have done so when specifically asked prior to publication. They didn't. What do you want the NYT to do?

Implication was that there was no I see. All over the Internet people were like what there was no I see that standard now? They have only implied there wasn’t one in it was deceptive. You can argue all you want, but people were confided.

The fact that princess Blake needed an intimacy coordinator on set to protect her at all times is absolutely ludicrous. I actually think that is going to work against her as an unreasonable demand. That is in no way standard and I’ve never heard of any other actors asking for that.

I am waiting for them to come out and blame it on severe postpartum depression. Blake seemed incredibly paranoid and thought that every man on that set was out to get her.

Look, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this word salad is due to voice-to-text on your phone. Next time try typing it out.

The point is that the NYT requested comment from Wayfarer and outlined Lively's allegations and they chose not to say anything like "we hired an IC before production began." That's on them. The NYT can only report what it knows. They did their due diligence. Lively alleged harassment and requested a full time IC, and Wayfarer agreed to provide one. If Wayfarer had more info about the IC, they should have told the NYT when they asked. You can't decline to comment on a situation when you know a newspaper is about to report about it and then say "hey you didn't include additional context that we had access to but failed to provide even when you asked" and call it defamation.

Again, as I said before, legally, you may be right. But it was just not the right thing to do. For Harvey Weinstein, they were working on the story for years, and they had several conference calls with him over the course of months to get his side of the story. It didn’t end up helping him, but that’s how they treated it. I’m just confused as to why one actress coming forward led to them only getting her side. I know that she’s famous and she was willing to put her name out there, but one actress alleging a bad experience on set, when we all clearly saw the power that she had on the film, should have tipped then off that there was more to the story.

Look you saw what happened as well as I did. This article came out and for about 10 days around Christmas time Blake lively was having the upswing of her life. Everyone was on her side. Then 10 days later when Justin’s team was able to put out just a fraction of their side of the story, it was radio silence from Hollywood and all of her supporters. I just don’t understand if they started working on this in October, why they couldn’t have given his team more time. I actually still think it would’ve been a really groundbreaking and huge article with more nuance. And I think it probably would’ve helped Blake too, because she had the 10 days, but look at her now.

The Weinstein comparison doesn't hold up. People only make this comparison because of Twohey. Weinstein took a long time to report because none of the women wanted to go on the record. They had to wait until there were enough women making allegations that they could convince them to come forward together -- no one wanted to be the lone accuser. Lively was not only willing to go on the record, she was filing a lawsuit. So they didn't have to wait around like they did with Weinstein. Also due to the lawsuit, they couldn't wait to publish because once the lawsuit was published, they'd have lost the story.

Also, they didn't interview Weinstein multiple times over the course of months. I believe they had one or maybe two conference calls with him prior to publication, and they absolutely waited to initiate those calls until the rest of the story was pinned down. This is standard practice. You don't give an accused days or weeks or months to spin up a cover story. You get all your details nailed and then you present them to the accused for comment prior to publication. You give them enough time to comment fully but not enough time to (1) leak it in advance to another outlet they think will be more favorable, or (2) invent a cover story.

Freedman DID leak the story to TMZ before NYT could publish, actually. Even with the short lead time, he still managed to leak the complaint to another outlet between the time NYT asked for comment and when the published. Newspapers know people will play these games and you have to time requests for comment to protect your story so that the time you spent reporting doesn't get lost.

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You can argue all you want. Twoey locked down her socials and the public is largely on Baldoni’s side and thinks the times article is trash. But yes, they likely aren’t in legal trouble.

I mean, this is a country that re-elected Donald Trump and Twohey no doubt gets death threats all the time for her reporting. Saying "the public is on Baldoni's side" is not particularly interesting to me because "the public" is regularly wrong about things.

[Anonymous]

There are numerous instances throughout the article where they rely on texts as opposed to the complaint. I think there is a a strong argument that using someone’s texts requires actually speaking to the person to conform their validity and completeness. Here’s a small sample, there are many more instances:

The documents show an additional playbook for waging a largely undetectable smear campaign in the digital era.

“We should have a plan for IF she does the same when movie comes out,” Mr. Baldoni wrote of Ms. Lively in a text exchange that included Ms. Abel, a publicist who has long worked with him and Wayfarer. “Plans make me feel more at ease.”

So did Ms. Hoover, the author, who had her own dissatisfactions with him and had become more upset after he told her about Ms. Lively’s allegations, according to text messages from Mr. Baldoni and Mr. Heath.

“Not in love with the document they sent,” he responded in a text exchange that included Ms. Abel and Mr. Heath. “Not sure I’m feeling the protection I felt on the call.”

Mr. Baldoni, Ms. Nathan and others on the team claimed in their text exchanges that Ms. Lively was using her own public relations team to create bad press about Mr. Baldoni but cited no evidence to support those claims.

By mid-August, the team was reveling in the damage to Ms. Lively’s image. Followed by text excerpts

https://archive.is/2024.12.21-152534/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/21/business/media/blake-lively-justin-baldoni-it-ends-with-us.html

[Anonymous]

The entire last section of the article also makes no reference to the Complaint:

A brand marketing consultant, Terakeet, produced a report in August for Ms. Lively that concluded she had likely been the object of a “targeted, multichannel online attack” similar to one against Ms. Heard, and that it was damaging her reputation.
The report did not identify who was behind the attack. But by analyzing “the entirety of Google’s search index” for Ms. Lively’s name, it found that 35 percent of the results also included a reference to Mr. Baldoni. This was highly unusual given the length of her career, the company said, and suggested that the media environment was being manipulated.
A separate report, by Ms. Lively’s hair-care company, Blake Brown, concluded that the social media onslaught also had a negative effect on that business. Her product line, which had launched in August with record-breaking sales, estimates that it lost as much as 78 percent in sales.
With the recent arrival of “It Ends With Us” on Netflix, Mr. Baldoni has begun another round of promotion and messaging.
In an interview on “Access Hollywood,” he said “there is never an excuse” to “hurt a woman, physically or emotionally.” He added, “We men have to step up and figure out how we can be better allies.”
https://archive.is/2024.12.21-152534/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/21/business/media/blake-lively-justin-baldoni-it-ends-with-us.html

[Anonymous]

Why are you guys fixated in what aspects do f the article are based on the complaint versus other reporting? Reporting on the texts themselves sees obviously okay-- those people texted those things.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are numerous instances throughout the article where they rely on texts as opposed to the complaint. I think there is a a strong argument that using someone’s texts requires actually speaking to the person to conform their validity and completeness. Here’s a small sample, there are many more instances:

The documents show an additional playbook for waging a largely undetectable smear campaign in the digital era.

“We should have a plan for IF she does the same when movie comes out,” Mr. Baldoni wrote of Ms. Lively in a text exchange that included Ms. Abel, a publicist who has long worked with him and Wayfarer. “Plans make me feel more at ease.”

So did Ms. Hoover, the author, who had her own dissatisfactions with him and had become more upset after he told her about Ms. Lively’s allegations, according to text messages from Mr. Baldoni and Mr. Heath.

“Not in love with the document they sent,” he responded in a text exchange that included Ms. Abel and Mr. Heath. “Not sure I’m feeling the protection I felt on the call.”

Mr. Baldoni, Ms. Nathan and others on the team claimed in their text exchanges that Ms. Lively was using her own public relations team to create bad press about Mr. Baldoni but cited no evidence to support those claims.

By mid-August, the team was reveling in the damage to Ms. Lively’s image. Followed by text excerpts

https://archive.is/2024.12.21-152534/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/21/business/media/blake-lively-justin-baldoni-it-ends-with-us.html

This is all sourced though. Are you saying any of the above is false or defamatory? I don't think it is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why are you guys fixated in what aspects do f the article are based on the complaint versus other reporting? Reporting on the texts themselves sees obviously okay-- those people texted those things.

The fair report privilege that The NY Times relies upon in its MTD only applies to reporting clearly tied to the Complaint.

[Anonymous]

Truth is a defense to defamation. Those factual statements are correct. They did text those things, the forensic report does say those things (I mean I personally can't verify that but I'm sure Lively provided a copy), Baldoni does say that on Access Hollywood (I assume Twohey watched a clip).

No issue quoting the texts if they reasonably believe the texts are real, not manufactured by Lively. They probably saw that they were received pursuant to a subpoena by Jonesworks and/or Jones verified them. There's no reason to believe NYT acted with actual malice or reckless disregard to the truth by quoting from text messages that were provided to them in the context of a formal legal complaint.

[Anonymous]

This one is on my eyes the most problematic given that the reporters made no effort to talk to any of these people, bolding mine:

Mr. Baldoni, Ms. Nathan and others on the team claimed in their text exchanges that Ms. Lively was using her own public relations team to create bad press about Mr. Baldoni but cited no evidence to support those claims.

Also problematic

By mid-August,b the team was reveling in the damage to Ms. Lively’s imageb

And this is in addition to the manipulation of one of the excerpted texts to remove the emoji that indicated sarcasm was intended.

In light of all of this. I believe Baldoni’s team has a decent argument that the NY Times cannot rely on the fair report doctrine where they cite texts as opposed to direct allegations in thr Complaint.


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[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Truth is a defense to defamation. Those factual statements are correct. They did text those things, the forensic report does say those things (I mean I personally can't verify that but I'm sure Lively provided a copy), Baldoni does say that on Access Hollywood (I assume Twohey watched a clip).

No issue quoting the texts if they reasonably believe the texts are real, not manufactured by Lively. They probably saw that they were received pursuant to a subpoena by Jonesworks and/or Jones verified them. There's no reason to believe NYT acted with actual malice or reckless disregard to the truth by quoting from text messages that were provided to them in the context of a formal legal complaint.

The problem is the motion claims that they only relied upon allegations in the complaint, as the fair report doctrine requires.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Truth is a defense to defamation. Those factual statements are correct. They did text those things, the forensic report does say those things (I mean I personally can't verify that but I'm sure Lively provided a copy), Baldoni does say that on Access Hollywood (I assume Twohey watched a clip).

No issue quoting the texts if they reasonably believe the texts are real, not manufactured by Lively. They probably saw that they were received pursuant to a subpoena by Jonesworks and/or Jones verified them. There's no reason to believe NYT acted with actual malice or reckless disregard to the truth by quoting from text messages that were provided to them in the context of a formal legal complaint.

The problem is the motion claims that they only relied upon allegations in the complaint, as the fair report doctrine requires.

DP, but no, it doesn't. This is a misread of the MTD. They are making multiple arguments, one if which is that their reporting of the contents of the complaint cannot be defamatory because they were fairly reporting the contents of a legal filing.

They also address the parts of their reporting based on other sources.