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'Coal King' Is Suing John Oliver, Time Warner, and HBO (washingtonpost.com)
Reader Daetrin writes: Robert E. Murray, CEO of one of the largest coal mining companies in the US, is suing John Oliver, HBO, and Time Warner for defamation (alternative source) over a comedic report on the status of the coal industry in John Oliver's "Last Week Tonight". The report began with the decline of the coal mining industry, Trump's promises to revive it, and the plight of the workers involved, but was also highly critical of the business practices and safety record of Murray Energy Corporation and Robert Murray's leadership of the company. When the company was contacted about the piece before airing they responded with a cease and desist letter and threatened to sue. John Oliver continued with the segment anyway, saying "I didn't really plan for so much of this piece to be about you, but you kinda forced my hand on that one."
Cease-and-decist letter brief clip
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
More complete piece on Coal economy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
If you read the article, you'll notice that Murry has sued a LOT of media companies for critical statements/reporting. The ones mentioned on this article were all dismissed so far.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
Also, it seems like it might cause a Streisand effect. Wouldn't that be lovely.
4.1 million people tune in to Last Week Tonight. Another 5-7million watch the episodes on You Tube, to say nothing of those people who pirate it because they can't get HBO.
I don't think he'll have much of a problem with Streisand Effects. The reality is most of the Streisand Effect cases end up with little actually such effect. I mean Streisand's case stood on its own because the effect is named after it, but like most of the stupid shit that goes on in the world this will be quickly forgotten. ... If John Oliver lets people forget :-)
How can you even think this is journalism
This is clearly not neutral news. John Oliver presents an opinion about certain situations.
Often a strong and relatable one.
Sure, it's often about things which should be news.
But I see the show itself more as entertainment and critique of conventional news.
He often puts his finger on situations where the news outlets forgot their neutrality.
"we are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
John Oliver frequently lies on his program, I've seen him do it MANY times. The most obvious one was his Obamacare episode. He had a woman who couldn't afford a colonoscopy because it coast $8,000. They are under $1,000, the $8,000 was her Obamacare deductible and because of that her insurance wasn't going to cover anything for the procedure. Deductibles were not that high before Obamacare. He intentionally misled the public on one of the worst parts of Obamacare to make it look like the reason it was needed.
Did actually watch the segment? First of all, the woman does not health insurance so she has to pay the full amount of whatever she is going to be charged. One of the benefits of having health insurance is that the insurance company negotiated rates for you already. Some costs without insurance are ridiculous. Second, $8,000 is what the woman was quoted to her. She said that's her cost in an interview reported by Al Jazeera. How did Oliver lie? Or are you being disingenuous?
I watched a few minutes this week to see if he would do some apology for the shooting of the Congressman. The shooter was a big fan of Oliver and revved up because of Oliver and Maddow. I didn't expect him to take blame, but some kind of statement that it was unacceptable would have been good to start off with. 5 minutes in and I didn't see anything like that.
So you fault Oliver for not covering the one topic you wanted him to cover in his hour weekly show in which he has to go over an entire week's worth of news in 5 minutes?
Oliver is shit. This Murray guy has facts Oliver was GIVEN before his program and failed to list. He INTENTIONALLY misled people watching his program at least in part. Not sure how courts rule on facts left out when it would make the target less "guilty".
Please state what facts that Murray gave Oliver. Second how do you know what Murray gave Oliver unless you work for Murray or you work for Oliver. If you don't work for Oliver, aren't you a shill?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
And yet Fox News is "Most Watched, Most Trusted."
You both are arguing a matter of semantics that really doesn't matter in a court for this purpose. The show isn't using a shield protection so determining if it is journalism or not doesn't matter. (Which as an aside here, legally, it doesn't matter the format, how it is presented, or whatever else you wish to pick. Content is the method for determining journalism. Federal circuit court definition used is typically von Bulow v. von Bulow 1982, for a given state look up that state's statue if they have one. Long story short, if there was a reason that someone needed to determine if the show was journalism or not, which there is no reason to do so but forgetting that altogether, this show would most likely classify as a news source, even with the comedy and random crazy going on in it.)
That said it seems that the filing points out that they were given sources of an opposing view in the cease and desist letter. That's an on purpose thing because then the show cannot claim that they did not know of any opposing views. If the case is heard in a local courtroom like WV/SC, this is about as much burden as the court needs and the show would be found liable. In a federal circuit court, however, there's a greater chance to have the case thrown out. Typically the burden is a lot higher and crying that "they didn't use our sources" isn't going to cut it.
So it should be no surprise to anyone that the suit is being filed in WV by the plaintiff. However, I am sure the show will seek to have the case heard in federal court.
To quickly recap the claims and what I personally feel about them.
defamation - Basically based on where it is heard will determine the outcome.
False light invasion of privacy - No way on any ground. This guy actively works with political figureheads. You give up anything that protects you from false light when you do that.
Intentional infliction of emotional distress - IIED is one of those wild card things. It just depends on how they present the case and who hears it. The typical thing to remember is that the thing that causes the distress has to be heinous, like really overboard, beyond what one would expect in a normal situation. There's people who use "shock" value to get a point across and that's 1A domain. Then there are people who scream, get in your face to the point you can feel the breath coming out of their mouth as they scream, and put their body parts within centimeters of your body. That's not exactly protected speech in a general setting, but in say a rally with protesters and counter-protesters there would be a little more leeway. There is more, but it all depends on who's hearing your case and what they consider "heinous" to be in the given context.
No matter where it is heard, it's an uphill battle for the plaintiff for sure. I'm pretty sure that they're banking on HBO not sticking with Oliver long enough to get through the whole thing, and that might be the entire point. However, seeing how this is on everything now (TV news, Reddit, radio, newspaper, Slashdot), it's getting HBO a lot of what it actually wants, attention, which might just mean they'll stick it out thick or thin with Oliver. If that happens to be the case, in the long term, this coal guy has near zero chance of ever benefiting from this proceedings.
Even if he does win the legal case (which is a long shot given the things cited but you never can tell), it might net him after everything is said and done a few tens of thousand. In the meantime,
HBO is reaping sweet sweet publicity, which long term might translate into more cash then they'll ever have to pay out. WV won't provide the plaintiff a statutory provision for legal fee should they lose there and in federal court none of these are considered outside the American Rule, so each party pays their lawyers win/lose/or draw.
I've never had an HBO subscription so I've never watched John Oliver
That's no excuse. He posts his entire show on youtube the day after it airs.
I'm not sure why we're making fun of his accent.
Because the alt-reich hate, hate, hate, HATE the guy, but they aren't smart enough to come up with a criticism of substance.
I don't know what that lady was quoted for her colonoscopy but when I just googled for the price I got results saying anywhere from under $1,000 to over $5,400. Also I don't know what her deductible was but $8,000 doesn't sound unbelievable either before or after Obamacare. I know I had "good" insurance before Obamacare and the deductible was $3,000 or more. I passed on the plan that would have left me with a $10,000 deductible.
According to the segment (around 2:15) the AC refers, Cathie Owen was in the Medicaid Gap where she didn't was not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid but she couldn't afford health insurance on her own. While it isn't stated she has no insurance, it certainly implies that she did not. She also had a family history of colon cancer so most likely that was one reason she couldn't afford insurance as pre-existing conditions left her without affordable insurance. Without insurance, costs are insanely high for anything.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
No one said they were unique.
However, Britain is named because in the UK the burden of proof is opposite. In the US, to sue for defamation you have to *prove* that someone knowingly lied. Truth is an absolute defense against defamation. In the UK, you use for defamation and the guy you're suing has to *prove* they told the truth.
British law leans towards protecting reputations; US law leans towards protecting speech.
In the US, most defamation suits go nowhere. In the UK, most are won. There's 'libel tourism' where people actually try to buy a book in the UK (even if it was not intended to be sold there exactly for this purpose) just to fall under UK's laws exactly because the standard of proof is also reversed in libel cases compared to the US.