Rachel Maddow, represented by Ted Boutrous of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, is asking a judge for the United States District Court for the Southern District of California to dismiss a $10 million defamation suit filed against her by One America News Network (OAN).
Last month, the parent company of OAN, Herring Networks, sued Maddow, MSNBC, NBCUniversal Media, and Comcast over a comment she made about OAN in July. During one of her nightly shows, Maddow cited a Daily Beast article that said that OAN employs a U.S. politics reporter who is also a paid contributor to Sputnik, a state-financed propaganda arm of the Russian government.
“In this case, the most obsequiously pro-Trump right-wing news outlet in America really literally is paid Russian propaganda,” she said on the show. “Their on-air U.S. politics reporter is paid by the Russian government to produce propaganda for that government.”
In the motion, Boutrous wrote that not only did OAN not contest the facts in The Daily Beast post, the network’s own complaint states that its politics reporter, Kristian Rouz, wrote for Sputnik for more than four years and was paid about $11,500 per year. The complaint also states “Sputnik News is affiliated with the Russian government.”
“When viewed in context—as they must be—Ms. Maddow’s words make clear that, when she called this arrangement ‘paid Russian propaganda,’ she was expressing her opinion and astonishment that OAN has a paid staffer who also works for a Russian organization known for distributing pro-Kremlin propaganda,” Boutrous wrote.
California is one of 29 states with an Anti-SLAPP law, which are put in place to discourage people from filing meritless libel or slander suits by making the plaintiff pay the attorney’s fees if they lose the case.
The motion for dismissal is scheduled to be in front of Judge Cynthia Bashant on December 16, 2019.
Times of San Diego Special Motion
September 10, 2019
MSNBC and Rachel Maddow Face $10 Million Defamation Lawsuit
A San Diego-based media organization, One America News Network (OAN), has filed a libel lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California against MSNBC talk show host Rachel Maddow for saying it “literally is paid Russian propaganda.”
The lawsuit refers to a July 22 show in which Maddow discussed a report published in The Daily Beast that highlighted the fact that Kristian Rouz, a reporter at OAN, also wrote for Sputnik News, a Russian government-owned news outlet.
See also: Libel: Protecting Vital Political Speech
“In this case, the most obsequiously pro-Trump right-wing news outlet in America really literally is paid Russian propaganda,” she said on the show. “Their on-air U.S. politics reporter is paid by the Russian government to produce propaganda for that government.”
The suit alleges that Maddow’s statements were “utterly and completely false” and “intended to malign and harm OAN.”
“OAN is not paid by the Russian government. In fact, OAN has taken no money outside the Herring family whatsoever. None of OAN’s content comes from the Russian government,” the complaint reads. OAN is owned and operated by Herring Networks, which is solely owned by members of the Herring family.
While OAN admits that Rouz has written for Sputnik, the lawsuit argues that Maddow’s reporting was inaccurate because Rouz was only a freelancer for the Russian news organization, and he was allowed to chose the topics and viewpoints of the articles he wrote for Sputnik News, which were mainly about “various topics in global economics and international finance.”
Additionally, the lawsuit alleges that Maddow’s show was aired in retaliation for OAN’s president Charles Herring’s criticism of Comcast, MSNBC’s parent company, for refusing to carry the conservative channel on its cable platform. Herring called Comcast’s decision “anti-competitive censorship.”
On July 25, OAN’s lawyer, Louis R. Miller, sent a letter to Comcast and Maddow demanding that they retract her statements, and make it clear that OAN is not “paid Russian propaganda.” “Should you refuse to comply with our demands by August 15, 2019, we will recommend that our client pursue all legal avenues to protect its interests…,” Miller wrote.
NBCUniversal News Group Counsel Amy Wolf responded to the letter on August 6th, arguing that OAN did not have a valid legal claim for defamation because Maddow’s statement was “a protected opinion based on disclosed facts.”
“Merriam-Webster defines ‘literally’ to mean ‘in effect’ and states that it is ‘used in an exaggerated way to emphasize a statement or description that is not literally true or possible’,” Wolf argues in the letter to OAN’s lawyers. “Ms. Maddow’s comment could not have been reasonably understood to mean that the Russian government made checks payable to OAN; indeed, she specifically noted who was paid by Sputnik. Use of the word ‘literally’ here is the kind of figure of speech that connotes opinion and thus cannot give rise to a defamation claim.”
In addition to Maddow, the complaint lists Comcast Corporation, NBCUniversal Media, and MSNBC Cable as defendants. OAN is seeking $10 million in compensatory damages.
Complaint The Hill Washington Examiner
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