New York Times Loses Libel Case

CLEVELAND, May 23 -- A federal jury ruled today that the New York Times and one of its reporters libeled an Ohio Supreme Court justice in an article about a lawsuit filed by the son of Sam Sheppard. But the jury said it was done without malicious intent and refused to award damages.

Justice Francis Sweeney was seeking $15 million. He accused the newspaper and reporter Fox Butterfield of libeling him in an article published April 13, 2000. Sweeney said the report defamed him by falsely saying he used his influence in a case he had been involved in earlier as a prosecutor.

U.S. District Judge Donald Nugent said the jury found that the article was "not substantially true," but that neither the newspaper nor the reporter acted with malice....

OK...what have we got so far:

1. Jayson Blair
2. The guy on leave after his unpaid (yet provided with an apartment in New Orleans) intern is revealed to have written the story.
3. Losing this libel suit.
4. Reporter booed off the stage at Rockford College in Illinois.
5. Mo Dowd revealed as selectively editing a quote by the president.

This has been a very good week. I predict more stories...I am really interested in the hint of graft in that gossip item.

It has been 30 years since Nixon asked the NYT to correct a false claim by Seymour Hersh in the NYT. Hersh claimed Nixon was heard to use the phrase 'Jew Boys' on a White House tape when, in fact, what was said was 'Jewish boys' and it was said by John Dean, not Nixon. Nixon told his lawyer, Len Garment, who is Jewish and dealt with the NYT in this matter, that he had never used the phrase 'Jew Boys' in his life, and judging by all of Nixon's private conversation that has spilled out during the past 30 years, and however angrily he railed about liberal Jews in the media and in the Democratic party, the phrase 'Jew Boy' has never surfaced. To be sure, Henry Kissinger claims that Nixon used the phrase in his presence in what Kissinger -- a well-known arbiter of 'good taste' who regularly leaked negative stories about his boss to the NYT -- said was a tasteless joke. Dr. K. said Nixon told him that Nixon's rightwing buddies called Dr. K. Nixon's Jew Boy. Knowing Nixon as well as he did, Garment's 'bottom line' assessment in his autobiography, Crazy Rhythm was that, based on a continuum of antiSemitism running from 1 to 100, he ranked Nixon "between 15 and 20 -- better than most, worse than some, much like the rest off the world."

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And the HITS just keep on coming!!!!