A defamation suit from Project Veritas against the New York Times is moving forward, as a judge has ruled the newspaper
A New York Supreme Court judge handed Veritas, known for its undercover and whistleblowing videos, a big "win" this week, allowing a defamation suit against the paper and two reporters to proceed forward.
The five Times articles in question called Veritas' Minnesota videos deceptive, but Justice Charles Wood determined this was not fact, but rather opinion from reporters Maggie Astor and Tiffany Hsu.
"The Articles that are the subject of this action called the Video 'deceptive,' but the dictionary definitions of 'disinformation' and 'deceptive' provided by defendants' counsel certainly apply to Astor's and Hsu's failure to note that they injected their opinions in news articles, as they now claim," he wrote in his decision.
Astor referred to a "long history" of releasing "manipulated or selectively edited footage" on the part of Veritas in an article, while Hsu called the video "deceptive" in coverage.
Wood said this sort of vague coverage "could be viewed as exposing Veritas to ridicule and harm to its reputation as a media source because the reader may read these news Articles, expecting facts, not opinion, and conclude that Veritas is a partisan zealot group, deceptively editing video, and presenting it as news."
[Main networks of course won't cover it, protecting NYT's methods "for the cause" .. Only RT would]