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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
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.
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.
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.