Pro-ITN Libel Suit Post (re: THE TEARS OF THE MIGHTY

Nathan Newman nathan.newman at yale.edu
Wed Mar 15 15:11:43 PST 2000



>On Behalf Of Max Sawicky
I am against the right of the state to assess economic damages
> against a newspaper for political reporting, but on the issue of truth, it
> is worth noting that a jury was unconvinced by LM's reporting.
> -- Nathan Newman
>
> But was the issue whose version of the history is
> accurate, or whether LM's description of ITN's
> coverage was accurate? There could have been
> as horrible a genocide as one could imagine,
> but that is irrelevant to whether ITN faked
> a news report and LM accurately exposed this
> fact.

Since the libel action was based on refuting LM's charge that ITN faked a news report, the jury apparently found LM's report false and libelous.

LM's position, as noted in Carroll's post was that LM was punished because it "dared defend the victims of Ms. Marshall's lies." Describing these guards, many of whom have been indicted on war crimes, as "victims" pretty much tells me most of what anyone should need to know about LM's bias. LM complained that "the trial was dominated by the testimony of a witness who claimed the Serbs beat people at this "concentration camp," as if that was irrelevant to the issue at hand.

LM was not doing some kind of FAIR report on poor reporting tactics; LM claimed that the report lied about this being a detention camp and, as Carroll's post emphasizes, LM to this day claims the report was lying when they claimed there was a detention camp. LM insists it was merely a "collection centre for refugees."

As Reuters reported yesterday:

"Among the strongest evidence in ITN's favour was the testimony of a Bosnian Moslem doctor who told of atrocities at a Serb-run camp at Trnopolji in northern Bosnia.

"They took wooden legs from tables and beat people with them," Dr Idriz Merdzanic told the court. "We heard the screams and the beatings. Then they would bring some of those they beat up to us to help them, to dress their wounds."

"He said some prisoners were taken away and never seen again."

As for LM, they did not spend their trial time just examining camera angles, but claiming that the camps in question were not prisons. So by LM's own testimony, this case was not about press coverage but about the truth of whether Muslim prisoners were imprisoned.

And on that core truth, the jury ruled against LM.

-- Nathan Newman



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