Colleen McCain Nelson
Close but no cigar…
The Kansas City Star’s feeble attempt to characterize Kansas Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning’s lawsuit against the newspaper in regard to its monumental fuck up of editing and running Steve Rose‘s bogus hit piece against Denning is laughable.
Seriously.
The Star admits to carelessly unleashing Rose’s made up column, then accuses Denning of trying to “chill free speech.”
Anyone with half a brain – even me – can see through that one.
“The Kansas City Star says this lawsuit is politically motivated, and I assure you it isn’t,” Denning said in a statement. “It’s about journalistic integrity and telling the truth. The Star has repeatedly published incorrect and misleading articles about me and has attributed false statements to me. These aren’t just claims I disagree with or don’t like; they’re false statements.”
My buddy Jim Fitzpatrick – a former Star reporter who got his tit in a front page wringer over a journalistic infraction – appears quite enamored with the Star’s daily editorial churn of liberally bent “how to think” pieces.
Jimmy C
Yet even Fitz was dumbfounded by how lamely Rose’s lame column was edited and handled.
“Rose tried to conduct the character assassination anonymously, by not using Denning’s name, but Nelson rightly informed Rose the column needed attribution,” Fitzpatrick writes.”Unfortunately, that’s the only thing Nelson did right in this journalistic debacle.
“In what is certainly one of the most shocking and irresponsible editing jobs I have seen in all my years in and around journalism, Nelson edited the column ping-pong style via email. The column triggered a libel suit that has The Star’s lawyers working furiously to avoid an ignominious legal loss.”
Indeed, nothing about this lame mess that Star editorial page editor Colleen McCain Nelson mishandled has anything to do with free speech.
“Had Nelson picked up the phone and probed, Rose’s ‘story’ would have collapsed. She would have killed the column; would have seen Rose was trying to blow one by her; and probably would have ended up firing him,” Fitzpatrick muses. “Instead, The Star is now on total defense and is paying lawyers tens of thousands of dollars to defend a libel suit.”
Can’t wait to hear what KCC scribe/lawyer Dwight Sutherland has to say.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is a prime example of how close to the precipice reporters and editors are and can be. In days gone by, far more caution was exercised but some of the biggest screwups I can recall went down on deadlines – just as this apparently did.
Stay tuned…
Still confused – and readily admit this is outta my pay grade. I thought the law suit was for 75K???
What is the actual exposure and how do you get to the amount?
Hey Chuck, the 75K is just a minimum number that enables them top move the lawsuit to federal court if they can’t get it dismissed with yesterday’s ploy in Joco court.
Within reason, the sky is the limit if Denning can show damages, plus legal fees.
More on this a little later
“We are the media. We are more important and way smarter than you, therefore we are ENTITLED TO LIE if it furthers our agenda. You plebes have a lot of nerve complaining about being lied to.”
Good one, Lydia…
The odd part of all this is that they basically are admitting fault, but trying to hide behind the free speech thing…because they can (or hope they can).
That’s the way lawyers work. Trust me, given the way all this went down, they know they’re totally in the wrong…firing and/or allowing Rose to resign, taking down the column and undertaking one of the most loose leaf edits I’ve ever seen.
Which is not to say they won’t treat and worm their way out of it to the extent they can