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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."
This seem to me to be cesnsorius litigation, and you are right, it has nothing to do with coal as an energy source.
quis custodiet ipsos custodes
Nothing good will come out of this for Murray. For HBO: follow-up segments, viral YouTube posts and millions of dollars in free advertising.
there's no place like ~
Sounds like Trump. I guess there's a reason Trump was so big on coal. He and Murray have an understanding.
Also, it seems like it might cause a Streisand effect. Wouldn't that be lovely.
Even an English accent which spends most of his show talking about the lack of sophistication and cachet of the English?
Or maybe he's just funny.
When people use it to be informed on current events it ceases to be a "comedy show" even if they do jokes.
I find it interesting that intent has no relevance in your argument.
It presents itself as an informative source for information on a topic
Ah, I see, you're ignoring intent so you can make up your own version of reality.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
It isn't about hating coal, but about an irrational approach on a perceived attack on a declining industry.
People like him and Trump are actually doing them a disservice. The Coal Industry will need to reorganize itself to a market where it wouldn't be considered the primary energy source, using the money made from these companies and their community to help revamp them to an economy where the Coal Mine isn't the center of the community but just one of many good employers.
There is a lot of good skills that have been obtained by the Coal workers which can easily be transferred to other sectors, but we need leadership to help lead them there. Right not the Trump American is too focused on putting this on life support thinking it will regain in strength. And the Clinton American is too busy labeling these companies and its employees villains.
As someone who lives in a post industrial town, where most of the big factories are closed down, and the local economy is poor at best. I still see a lot of potential in these areas if the community is willing to get off the idea that somehow they will bring back the factories.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Wait... are you talking about Fox News?
Something like this doesn't end up on air without the network's lawyers and executives getting involved. Oliver and his writers came up with the segment, knew they were going to be doing something very damned provocative, obviously went to HBO with the segment and HBO, who let's be blunt here, makes a lot of money off of Oliver's show, said "go for it!" There's always risk with these sorts of pieces, whether it's a semi-serious/comedy news program or a more mainstream newsroom, but either way, so long as you've crossed your "t"s and dotted your "i"s, I don't see much likelihood in this case of a successful outcome for the complainant. Unless he can show Oliver and his team willfully misrepresented the facts, all that's going to happen is some lawyers make some money.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Lazy can lead to misrepresentation. Right now NYT might be getting sued for lazy journalism by Sarah Palin. Legal experts are split on her case, but they agree that it could go either way if she actually decides to file suit. And that's with posting an incorrect fact and then later retracting it. It comes down to if they should have known that it was incorrect when the originally posted it.
The reason you think it's "basically impossible" is because the cases you're familiar with deal with public figures. Celebrities and politicians. There are a lot of exceptions made for public figures. But this guy isn't a public figure. Most people would have never heard of him up until now. This makes it a lot easier for him, and John Oliver had better make sure he didn't misrepresent a thing or say one falsehood. And if he did, he'd better make damn sure that he posts a retraction immediately, otherwise this could cost them a lot of money. Sarah Palins case comes in to a similar situation. The pundits think it would be fairly clear cut if she were still an acting politician and clearly in the public eye, but because she has largely removed herself, now the case becomes much more serious.
It's worse for Murray than that. While other networks' news organizations are mainly just interested in reporting a story, Oliver has absolutely no problem with multi-episode segments. His brutal (and much needed) attacks on FIFA were a good example of how he and his writers can happily air updates to previous stories, in the case of FIFA, each new segment more astounding than the last (and not really because of Oliver, but largely because FIFA is truly an evil and corrupt organization run by sociopaths and arch-criminals worthy of a Bond film).
So I'm sure Oliver's team was expecting, even looking forward to Murray's inevitable lawsuit. Indeed, Oliver pretty much openly challenged him to, and you can be sure that there will be followup segments until Murray's case is dismissed, as apparently they all have been.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
From the many segments I've seen, most of his pieces are well-researched. It is sad to think that his comedy show is producing some of the best journalism these days winning a Peabody award in 2014.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
If you watch the clip, John Oliver was very careful in the way he spoke. He didn't say, "Coal guy said X" instead he said, "the newspaper reported that Coal guy said X." I'm sure they had lawyers reviewing the script before airing.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I watched the show. Oliver did two things: he played news videos and quoted from published documents. Then he made satirical comments about what was in those documents. He's funny as hell, but you could tell he knows the boundaries and he's very careful not to cross them.
Murray's a bit of a character, and Oliver pointed out some inconsistencies between what he said and what he did.
Good luck to Murray. He's a dick. And I hope he loses.
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?
One of the tactics of the American right (ie. Republicans) is to insist that everybody in the country now has much costlier insurance with less coverage and different doctors "thanks to Obamacare". My insurance costs were going up before Obamacare and they've gone up after, but I've seen no proof that they weren't going up anyway without it. And I've had no coverage changes or been forced to change doctors at all. One of my best friends (small businessman) admitted that he and his family have saved a lot of money on insurance (for themselves) since Obamacare yet he hates Obama with a passion and insists he was the world president ever. People believe what they want to believe.