Defamation lawsuits: they’re every journalist’s nightmare. You either intentionally or unintentionally misrepresent the facts, causing your company to fork over millions of dollars, and all of a sudden you are greeted with a lot of silence around the water cooler. Or maybe you're looking for a new job.
As a strong First Amendment advocate, I am always cautious about punishing news outlets or individuals for expressing their opinions. That being said, I have exactly zero sympathy for the New York Times, which just lost its first defamation case in over half a century and has to pay a maligned college basketball player close to 10 million bucks.
They have been so slanted and so biased for so long now that it’s a wonder this hasn’t happened before.
So many of their stories rely on “unnamed sources” and “people close to the situation.” That came back to bite them in the posterior this time around:
The New York Times was defeated in a defamation lawsuit Thursday brought by a former college basketball player and ordered to pay millions in damages.
An Alabama jury ruled the Times defamed Kai Spears, then an 18-year-old freshman walk-on basketball player for the University of Alabama's Crimson Tide, who was swept up in a 2023 report linking him to a fatal shooting.
After a nine-day trial, the eight-person jury determined that Spears was owed $9.25 million in damages.
The story was great — but it wasn’t true:
An Alabama jury just ordered The New York Times to pay $9.25 million to former University of Alabama basketball player Kai Spears after the paper falsely identified him as being at the scene of a fatal shooting.
— Fox News Flash (@FoxNews_Flash) August 21, 2026
Spears was an 18-year-old freshman walk-on when a 2023 Times report… pic.twitter.com/9Td4xdbsXR
An Alabama jury just ordered The New York Times to pay $9.25 million to former University of Alabama basketball player Kai Spears after the paper falsely identified him as being at the scene of a fatal shooting.
Spears was an 18-year-old freshman walk-on when a 2023 Times report linked him to a January 2023 shooting that killed 23-year-old Jamea Harris. The reporter relied on a single anonymous source. The Times corrected the story months later — after Spears filed his defamation lawsuit.
The paper hadn't lost a defamation case brought in the United States over one of its articles in more than 50 years.
They corrected it after Spears filed his defamation lawsuit. But hey, everybody makes mistakes, right? Just own up to it right away and apologize. That’s not how the Slimes rolls, though, and now they're on the hook for almost 10 mil. Sorry not sorry.
As a Duke graduate (don’t hate me; it was awesome back in the day), I watched with increasing alarm as I read the breathless reporting in 2006 about the school’s racist lacrosse team raping an exotic dancer at a party. After I recovered from my shock, I thought to myself, something about this smells. As the media frothed at the mouth and obsessed about race, class, and privilege, Duke suspended the team and canceled the entire season.
Turns out, the woman was a murderous psycho, the entire story was bogus, and the players were innocent. Watch this flashback from 2007, and hint: it's not Bill O'Reilly the post is referring to; it's someone who's a key player in the Trump administration today:
Since Duke Lacrosse is in the news...
— kevin smith (@kevin_smith45) December 13, 2024
It's important to remember the Only 1 person who defend them in Public At the time...
Does this Former Duke University Student look familiar? pic.twitter.com/7ZYVP4oWkW
White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller showed in the above clip that he's always been ahead of the curve.
The vindication for the players came after almost a full year, however, a year in which the media and the university's own professors relentlessly raked them over the coals for many agonizing months.
It’s satisfying seeing the left-wing rag that is the Bible for so many progressives facing accountability. However, it doesn’t fix the Glaring Media Hypocrisy Story of the Modern Age: the Grey Lady also took home a Pulitzer in 2018 for its exhaustive, wall-to-wall coverage of the Trump Russia collusion story.
The only problem? The whole thing was a Deep State hoax, and the Times pushed it as hard as anyone. My recommendation: pay the $10 million to the young basketball player you defamed, then return that fraudulent Pulitzer.
Until then, you will remain in the eyes of so many as exactly what you so often are: “fake news.”
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