Reply to Blake Lively- Jason Baldoni and NYT

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Above poster, I am not a lawyer, but I fund this conversation interesting.  Would you please explain why if some podcasters said the NYT did have risk, then why won’t others come out in support of the ‘beloved’ NYT.  What am I missing.  I agree with poster that indicated there is a difference between the NYT not having the filing, which is what NYT said correct?  But having information that was in the filing likely from someone on BL’s ‘team’. [/quote]

From the NYT's standpoint, the fact that they worked on the story for several weeks and only published once they had the complaint is actually a positive. Unlike in the Palin case, there is no rush to publish argument. They took their time and they only published when they had evidence of a newsworthy event (the complaint).

Baldoni will argue that they should have taken more time to get "his side" before publishing. The NYT will argue that they viewed it as an ongoing matter and assumed that Baldoni would respond in pleadings and that they would report on that, which they did. I expect they will also argue that they saw the real "story" to be about the behavior of the PR team, the texts showing how PR pros manipulate public perception of celebrities, and info about astroturfing and story "seeding" which the public may have been largely unaware of. The link back to the Depp/Heard trial and the online campaign against Heard will also have made this feel particularly newsworthy and that's the aspect of the story that they really focused on in initial reporting.

The NYT is not actually required to get Baldoni's "side" to report the story. Their angle wasn't really even about him. As long as they didn't intentionally publish anything untrue about him, their case is extremely strong. The fact that they worked on the story for a while is a defense, not a weakness of their case.[/quote]

The time they had cuts both ways, and will be meaningful for determining reasonableness for not digging into his side more if this gets to a jury. This is mostly a defamation by implication case and maybe false light as the first post in this thread mentioned, although that’s a somewhat novel approach.

And again, the PR people are likely private figures = simple negligence standard. [/quote]

Again, they are under no obligation to "dig into his side." Biased journalism is legal and happens all the time (Fox News does it daily and, infuriatingly, it's not considered defamation even when it's egregiously biased).

The issue is whether they knowingly printed falsehoods. There's no evidence they did. They couched all her allegations as allegations. The worst thing they did was print some texts without additional context that changed the tone or meaning, but even those arguments are tricky -- in one case the argument is that the context makes it clear the comment was sarcastic. That's a tough argument -- sarcasm is famously hard to recognize in this kind of communication.

But no, the fact that they didn't deeply explore Baldoni's side or give him more than 12-14 hours or so to comment (I can't remember exactly what they gave him but it was around there) does not make it defamation or false light.

The PR people might have a slightly better case, especially if they are deemed private figures. I think Baldoni has no case here, sorry. He should focus on the Lively stuff where he has a much stronger position, and where a win will essentially obliterate whatever damage the NYT articles did to his rep.[/quote]

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