It’s never a good idea to just print whatever the government tells you to print, not when you have the First Amendment to rely on. On the other hand, if you’re CBS News, it’s probably in your best interest to run whatever the government says to run because it’s probably going to be the same thing your boss will tell you to run. (thanks Bari)
When it comes to the aftermath of the hurried, botched remake of the Lincoln Reflecting Pool in Trump’s own image, press agencies should have led with their skepticism. This rarely happened and it gave Trump just enough cover to convert his failures into arrests of US citizens.
All of that has fallen apart. The cases against alleged reflecting pool “vandals” have spectacularly collapsed, beginning with government witnesses undermining Trump’s narrative in grand jury hearings and ending with a federal judge dismissing the high-profile case against former Olympian David Hearn with prejudice when the DOJ refused to do so… even after admitting (and the contractor itself admitting) that any claimed “vandalism” was actually just shoddy repair work disintegrating on its own.
Now, while I am sympathetic to a teen who managed to make headline news for simply being in the vicinity of this pool-related self-implosion, I don’t have any reason to believe the plaintiff actually has a case they can win. Here are the details, courtesy of Deadline’s Ted Johnson:
A Maryland teenager filed [a] defamation suit against CBS News over a report his attorneys say falsely linked him as one of those arrested for alleged vandalism of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool last summer.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, seeks at least $20 million in damages.
While I personally don’t know any teens who could possibly be defamed to the tune of $20 million, the plaintiff does have a point about the misleading coverage delivered by CBS News.
The plaintiff, identified as “JV” and as a 15-year old high school student, was riding his e-dirt bike past the National Mall on June 20, according to the suit. He was briefly detained and handcuffed over the use of the e-bike, and released without charges, per the suit.
The lawsuit claimed that in a June 21 report on the CBS Weekend News, a story “falsely asserted that JV was arrested for engaging in vandalism towards the Reflecting Pool.” The broadcast story did not show his face, but the lawsuit claimed that “it showed video of him from the rear while he was briefly handcuffed, and he was readily identifiable because of his hair and because of the distinctive nature of the logo on the black hoodie that he was wearing (which he routinely wears and is known to wear).”
That does suck. But while the plaintiff claims that millions of people watched the broadcast and accessed subsequent social media posts made by CBS News, he only specifically alleges that he was “recognized” by “friends and acquaintances,” which we have to assume number far less than the multiple-millions alleged to have viewed the misleading coverage by CBS News.
The plaintiff also claims that this misrepresentation has disrupted his past and present and will do significant harm to his future opportunities. Whatever the legal standard is, it’s hard to believe that someone who wasn’t even arrested during Trump’s post-embarrassment witch hunt has much of a case to press when those who were actually arrested and indicted are seeing these charges dismissed and their innocence proclaimed (by proxy, if nothing else) by high-level federal prosecutors and the government contractor who failed to deliver a quality product when paid to refurbish the reflecting pool.
On top of that, what was implied by the coverage is completely covered by the First Amendment, even if CBS News anchor Jericka Duncan issued a retraction and said “we never should have published this story.” That retraction seems to refer to the story in general — in other words, the granting of credence to Trump’s vindictive “vandalism” fantasies — rather than specifically to the momentary inclusion of footage of the teen’s detainment.
While I firmly believe CBS should suffer immense harm for deciding to be part-time propagandists in exchange for anti-trust exemptions, it should be a punishment enacted by an exodus of viewers. While this teen might honestly feel harmed by this fleeting moment of infamy, there doesn’t appear to be anything approaching defamation here. Using the government to get what you want from an entity using the government to get what it wants is just the same kind of opportunism, albeit at a much smaller scale. And while the teen has every right to utilize the courts to seek redress for perceived injuries, it doesn’t make his case any more admirable or justified than those filed by countless others who are just angry that people said derogatory (by true) things about them on air.