Ex-Sheriff Joe Arpaio Claims Three Publications Did $300 Million In Damage To His Pristine Reputation

from the exponential-thinking dept

Former sheriff (and ongoing blight on the state of Arizona) Joe Arpaio has decided to sue a handful of new agencies for defamation. The slightly-overwrought press release from FreedomWatch (and founder Larry Klayman) alleges defamation per se on the part of CNN, the Huffington Post, and Rolling Stone and claims these three publications caused $300.5 million in damage to Arpaio's otherwise impeccable reputation.

Here's Freedom Watch's zesty summation of the lawsuit:

"It's time that someone stood up to the Left's 'Fake News' media, which is bent on destroying anyone who is a supporter of the president and in particular Sheriff Arpaio. My client will not be bullied by the likes of Jeff Zucker, Chris Cuomo, the Huffington Post, and Rolling Stone, as he alone has the courage to stand up for not just himself, the President of the United States but also all fair-minded and ethical Americans."

Ok, then. If you think the lawsuit itself is a much more buttoned-down affair, then you haven't read a Larry Klayman complaint before. It starts with the usual stuff establishing standing before getting down to the focus of the complaint. The alleged defamation committed by all three defendants is referring to Joe Arpaio as a "convicted felon" when his only conviction was for a misdemeanor. Rolling Stone issued a correction but the other two defendants haven't corrected their original misstatements. Hence the lawsuit -- Arpaio and Klayman's public attempt to stick it to the "Left Fake News media."

Here's why Arpaio feels he's owed $300 million for a couple of standing misstatements. Running for an open US Senate seat must pay really well.

Plaintiff Arpaio’s chances and prospects of election to the U.S. Senate in 2020 have been severely harmed by the publication of false and fraudulent facts in the Defamatory Article. This also harms Plaintiff financially, as his chances of obtaining funding from the Republican establishment and donors for the 2020 election have been damaged by the publication of false and fraudulent representations in the Defamatory Article.

Given the pardon issued to him by the Republican president currently in office, it seems unlikely his reputation suffered any damage from these incorrect statements. If anything, it only further damaged the reputation of these publications, at least in the eyes of Arpaio supporters (which presumably includes a sizeable percentage of Republican voters).

Arpaio managed to survive hundreds of self-inflicted reputational wounds during his years as sheriff, so it's a bit of a stretch to claim three "fake news" sources have done anything more than further cement his reputation as a martyr to the cause.

Arpaio also claims this has damaged his reputation within the law enforcement community. Again, it seems unlikely to have budged the needle there either. Law enforcement agencies tend to view the press with the same suspicion Arpaio does and probably agree the ex-sheriff was persecuted rather than prosecuted.

Nevertheless, there's potential money to be made. And Klayman, representing Arpaio, isn't above using a federal lawsuit as soapbox. At times, the complaint [PDF] more resembles a transcript of a YouTube monologue than a statement of facts and allegations.

Defendants are aware of these prospective business relationships and thus, given their malice and leftist enmity of Arpaio sought to destroy them with the publication of the subject Defamatory Publications.

Defendants published the Defamatory Publications to influence the RNC, the RNCC and affiliated political action committee and persons, and other donors, to withhold funding for Plaintiff Arpaio’s 2020 political campaign by smearing and destroying his reputation and standing in his law enforcement, government and political community.

Plaintiff Arpaio has been harmed as to his reputation as “America’s Toughest Sheriff” and financially by the publication of the Defamatory Article.

[insert fire emoji]

While it's true publications got the facts wrong, Joe Arpaio is an extremely public person. This raises the bar he must meet to succeed in this lawsuit. While the publications may have been careless in incorrectly noting the level of the offense that Arpaio was convicted for, that's not nearly enough to secure a favorable ruling.

The difference between convicted felon and convicted misdemeanant probably doesn't mean much when placed in the totality of Arpaio's recent history. Arpaio was convicted of contempt and spent part of the last decade being investigated by the DOJ. Add this to his long history of civil liberties violations and refusal to adhere to court orders, and the difference between a felony conviction and a misdemeanor is a rounding error.

Arpaio's reputation has been leaking hit points for a long time, but it has never affected his popularity with his presumed voter base. The rest of America may hate "America's Toughest Sheriff," but his supporters can't get enough of him. Three mistakes by three publications is unlikely to have caused $300-worth of damage to the ex-sheriff's Senatorial chances, much less $300 million. Some people are just defamation-proof and it's a good bet Joseph Arpaio is one of them.

Arpaio's welcome to waste the court's time and his own money claiming the "fake news" media dinged his rust bucket of a reputation, but he's not going to be happy when the court apprises him of the above facts. The problem is these three publications will have to spend some money of their own defending against a seriously weak lawsuit. With the DC circuit having decided it doesn't need to apply the District's own anti-SLAPP law to federal cases, it's likely the defendants will be stuck with covering their own costs, even if they prevail. On top of that they'll have to deal with an opposing counsel with a penchant for pissing off judges and treating the courtroom like a heated Periscope broadcast. It's a waste of everyone's time and money but Klayman's. I'm pretty sure he didn't take this on contingency.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, defamation, first amendment, free speech, joe arpaio, larry klayman, reputation
Companies: cnn, huffington post, rolling stone

Super Injunction Silences News About Vatican Official's Child Molestation Conviction, And That's Bullshit

from the blatant-censorship dept

We've written in the past about things like "super injunctions" in the UK and elsewhere that often put a huge and near absolute gag order on writing about a famous person enmeshed in some sort of scandal, and apparently Australia has such a thing as well -- and it's now scaring off tons of publications from writing about the fact that George Pell, the Vatican's CFO and often called the "3rd most powerful person in the Vatican" was convicted on all charges that he sexually molested choir boys in Australia in the 1990s. However, the press is barred from reporting on it based on one of those gag orders. The Herald Sun in Australia did post a brilliant, Streisand Effect-inducing front page display about how it was being censored from publishing an important story:

Though, if you click on the link in that tweet it now shows an error message reading Error 400 and "Content is deleted, expired or legal killed." Legal killed.

And here's the thing. Very few publications -- even those outside of Australia -- seem to be willing to pick up on the story. To their credit, the NY Post, owned by Australian Rupert Murdoch has posted about it as has Margaret Sullivan at the Washington Post, who included an impassioned plea for this kind of censorship to not be allowed to continue.

The secrecy surrounding the court case — and now the verdict — is offensive. That’s especially so because it echoes the secrecy that has always been so appalling a part of widespread sexual abuse by priests.

That has changed a great deal in recent years — in part because of the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation in 2002 that broke open a global scandal and was the subject of the Oscar-winning film “Spotlight.” (Current Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron was executive editor at the Globe at that time.)

But clearly, it hasn’t changed entirely. And the news media shouldn’t be forced to be a part of keeping these destructive secrets.

Steven Spaner, Australia coordinator from the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests told the Daily Beast he felt frustrated and left “in the dark” because of the suppression of news about Pell.

“It’s hard to know if there are any shenanigans going on — things the church did that are illegal themselves,” he said. “There is always suspicion when you don’t know what is going on.”

The story itself was actually broken by The Daily Beast (first link up top), but as that site's editor told Sullivan at the Washington Post, they were a bit worried about doing so:

Editor in chief Noah Shachtman told me that he waded carefully into the dangerous legal waters.

“We understood there could be legal, and even criminal, consequences if we ran this story,” said. “But ultimately, this was an easy call. You’ve got a top Vatican official convicted of a horrific crime. That’s major, major news. The public deserves to know about it.”

Shachtman said the Daily Beast did its best to honor the suppression order, consulting with attorneys here and in Australia, and even “geo-blocking” the article so that it would be harder to access in Australia, and keeping headlines “relatively neutral.”

If you do look around, there are a bunch of news articles, including some in Australia, all published after the verdict, talking about how the Pope has "removed" Pell from his "inner circle" and hinting at "historical sexual offences" but not saying that he's been convicted. And even the news of the removal is made to sound rather benign:

A Vatican spokesman said Francis had written to the prelates “thanking them for the work they have done over these past five years”.

Or here's an article from the Australian again published after the conviction, but not mentioning a word of it, and making it sound like Pell's removal was merely his term being up:

The Vatican said it had written to Cardinal Pell and his two colleagues in late October, telling them their roles on the C9 council had expired at the end of their five-year tenure.

[....]

“In October, the Pope had written to three of the more ­elderly cardinals — Cardinal Pell from Australia, Cardinal ­Errazuriz from Chile and Cardinal Monsengwo of Congo — thanking them for their work,” he said.

“After a five-year term, these three have passed out for the ­moment.”

And the Washington Post's Editor, Marty Baron, has now had to defend publishing Sullivan's piece:

If you can't read that, it says:

This story is a matter of major news significance involving an individual of global prominence. A fundamental principle of The Washington Post is to report the news truthfully, which we did. While we always consider guidelines given by courts and governments, we must ultimately use our judgment and exercise our right to publish such consequential news. Freedom of the press in the world will cease to exist if a judge in one country is allowed to bar publication of information anywhere in the world.

It seems heavily implied by this statement that the Washington Post has been contacted about its story.

Some may argue that there is, in fact, a good reason for the suppression orders. Specifically, the idea is to have trials of prominent figures be "impartial" and not influenced by media coverage. And you can understand the basic reasoning for that -- though, in this case, there is already a conviction, and that seems obviously newsworthy. The response to that argument is that Pell is still facing more such charges in another trial. I'm sympathetic to these arguments, but only to the point that I understand the emotional position from which those arguments are made. I cannot, however, agree that they are good reasons. Yes, media sensationalism around a trial can be an issue, but in the US we've been able to deal with that fairly successfully over the years with the way courts treat jurors and order them not to read the press coverage. Is it a perfect system? Nope. Not at all. But it does mostly function. On the flip side, the ability to do damage through these gag orders is immense.

Among other things, it hides the details of what's happening at the trial, and those details can really matter, as Sullivan's article quote above makes clear. In addition, only being able to reveal details way after the fact very much dilutes or even totally destroys the impact of such stories. It is much harder to make people care about this news much later, after it has been suppressed, than when it first comes out.

On top of that, all of this relies on the idea that those issuing these gag orders always do so with the best of intentions, and that's a huge leap of faith. The opportunity for mischief here is great, as we've seen in the UK with some of its super injunctions.

This kind of thing is one of the reasons why we're so concerned here about encroachments on free speech by governments. The ability to order platforms to censor material is a massively slippery slope. Indeed, in searching for the news coverage about this, I couldn't find any of the actual coverage of the convictions on Google News. I could only find the stories about the much more tame "removed from the inner circle." It may be that Google News algorithms picked up on that story more prominently (in part because there are many more such stories) or it could be because Australia has told Google News not to post such stories. At the very least, it's ambiguous and concerning.

Having a free and open press is a pretty key aspect of democracy. Australia is making it clear that it doesn't buy into that, and tragically, it's leading to new publications around the world choosing not to report on a huge story with immense public impact.

Filed Under: australia, free press, free speech, george pell, journalism, reporting, vatican