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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
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
Unlike in Britain, the US has extremely strong free speech protections, especially if you can afford a decent lawyer (which Oliver/HBO/TW can). You basically can't win a defamation case in the US, therefore Robert E. Murray doesn't have a legitimate case.
For it to be defamation he would also have to prove that Oliver used false and damaging information. Which means he would have to state on record safety records, business practices, etc. And the burden of proof is on him, not on Oliver. And Murray is just drawing attention to Oliver and his criticism anyway. I hadn't even heard about this segment before this, but honestly I pretty much assume that, since coal companies have a long history of horrible working conditions and shitty and unfair business practices that they haven't changed too much in the previous years and, given the current administration, are probably looking at how to walk back what few changes they have made.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
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.
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.
...revamp them to an economy where the Coal Mine isn't the center of the community but just one of many good employers.
Based on the information in the John Oliver segment (which matches with what I vaguely knew about the situation beforehand), most actual coal mining going on today doesn't even fit with being "one of many good employers" for an Appalachian community.
The old model was basically: you have a coal mine. You send people with hand or hand-held power tools down into that mine to dig out the coal. If that particular mine runs out (which it will after many decades of use), the odds are very good you can open a new one within a short enough distance that the people from the same town can still work it. This model took hundreds to thousands of men to extract a modest stream of coal from the mine for a long period of time.
The new model, as I understand it, is: you have a mountain with coal in it. You use explosives and enormous machines to cut the top off the mountain layer by layer and sift the coal out of the debris. This model takes a few men (maybe a few dozen) to extract a huge amount of coal out of the mountain in a short time, then they move on to another mountain.
Not only does the new model employ an order of magnitude fewer people, it doesn't provide a job that stays in one place for decades. That makes it a poor fit for a "good employer" for a community.
(That is, of course, leaving aside entirely what the new model does to the environment, which is godawful, but not relevant to its place as a community employer.
Dan Aris
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It's not so much "leave me alone" as it is "stop contradicting me, news media!" For example, there was a big mine accident of his. Even before the reports came in, with miners still trapped underground, Bob Murray proclaimed that this wasn't due to bad mining practices by his company but by an earthquake. Later, the official analysis found no evidence of an earthquake and cited bad practices by his company. Yet, he still insists it was an earthquake and is ready to sue anyone who says otherwise because, apparently, disagreeing with him (and agreeing with the official analysis of the incident) is "defamation of character."
You can't constantly go around spouting complete falsehoods and then complain when people use facts to prove you wrong. At least, you can't do this in front of a judge (yet).
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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.