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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."
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
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.