SITE MENU
Registered Members experience this forum ad and noise-free.
CLICK HERE to Register for a free account and login for a smoother ad-free experience. It's easy, and only takes a few moments.Lol, you guys are too much. Everyone's an armchair lawyer. There's no suit, and there won't be.
Lol, you guys are too much. Everyone's an armchair lawyer. There's no suit, and there won't be.
As a technical point, the term you're thinking of is actual malice; malice aforethought is involved in a slightly different crime.
Making things worse for the Herald, the article was not published on Tomasse's blog, but was front-paged on the Herald web site. I presume it was also given prominence in the Herald itself, but since I don't live in the Boston area, I don't know for sure.
They could rename it the Patriot-Herald. That would be pretty cool to have the Pats on the front page every day, especially during baseball season.
Can we just put a sock in it about a lawsuit?
Think a minute before posting wish fullfillment fantasies, people. Kraft owns a business. He is NOT going to 'wrestle the pig in the mud' by suing the Herald or anyone else over this. It is in his and the team's best interests to move along, especially given the NFL owners and comissioner's belated support' such as it is. Why damage your brand by indulging in a lawsuit that only fans the editorial flames of sports 'journalists' and media outlets (e.g. ESPN) who have proven time and again that they don't let facts shape their opinions? It should also be clear to unbiased observers that Kraft would have a very very difficult time proving malicious intent and assigning a defensible figure to his damages. Whining about reduced merchandise sales is not going to get a lot of sympathy to an audience faced with a 40% ticket price increase.
The few sane voices here have pointed out that simply continuing to win and behind the scenes payback moves will be the Krafts' response. The Herald is already damaged by its editors' egregious error in judgement.
Stop the fantasizing. Dream of your making it with Brady's GF; it's more likely.
ScottieC said:I understand all the legal wrangling, but in the end it's a pretty simple case - Prove your liabous article to be true.
You can't really be that obtuse as to not know why Kraft hadn't filed suit yet, can you? Let me explain it. Kraft has to wait until the league got somewhere with Walsh. If Walsh DID have something, then there wouldn't be any grounds for the lawsuit. Since its looking more and more like Walsh has nothing, then what the Herald did was libel and Kraft CAN go after them for impugning the integrity of the Patriots organization.
While newspapers and journalists aren't required to reveal their sources, they need to check the integrity of them. As Dan Rather learned the hard way.
Wildo7 said:Can I ask what they would sue the herald for? While I deplore Tomase and the like I don't think they libeled anybody, certainly not in a way that could recover damages in court. Writing about "rumors of a taped walkthrough" isn't saying there is a tape out there. It's saying that there are rumors, which was true, even if the rumors were bullshyte, which they were.
If they were going to sue they would have already. If they sue now what is their reason for waiting? Did they want to wait and see if the allegations were true? That doesn't look very good.
I'd be willing to bet anyone here that the Herald will not be sued.
yes ''''''Can we just put a sock in it about a lawsuit?
Think a minute before posting wish fullfillment fantasies, people. Kraft owns a business. He is NOT going to 'wrestle the pig in the mud' by suing the Herald or anyone else over this. It is in his and the team's best interests to move along, especially given the NFL owners and comissioner's belated support' such as it is. Why damage your brand by indulging in a lawsuit that only fans the editorial flames of sports 'journalists' and media outlets (e.g. ESPN) who have proven time and again that they don't let facts shape their opinions? It should also be clear to unbiased observers that Kraft would have a very very difficult time proving malicious intent and assigning a defensible figure to his damages. Whining about reduced merchandise sales is not going to get a lot of sympathy to an audience faced with a 40% ticket price increase.
The few sane voices here have pointed out that simply continuing to win and behind the scenes payback moves will be the Krafts' response. The Herald is already damaged by its editors' egregious error in judgement.
Stop the fantasizing. Dream of your making it with Brady's GF; it's more likely.
You can't just go blaming it on the source. It's Tomase and the paper's job to ensure their sources are accurate.
The Patriots could certainly sue based on the fact that Tomase did not meet the general minimum for journalistic standards. Several things he did wrong that could come back to haunt him.
First, he did not independently verify his source. Journalistic standards require that to run a story is that you should be able to verify any source with two independent source. It was clear that Tomase rushed the story and did not appear to have independently verify.
Second, Tomase never got the Patriots to response to the charges. It is standard journalistic practices to at least an effort from the accused for a response. That is why you always see "xxxx did not return our calls" type of language in articles. It is a way to protect themselves from libel. Tomase did not have that in his piece so it is assumed he did not get try to get the Patriots' response to the charges. He could lose his case right there because of it.
Kraft certainly has a case that Tomase was reckless in this case and he did not follow the minimum guidelines of proper journalism when he wrote and published the piece. The one thing going for Tomase and the Herald is that the source said that he/she did not know whether the Patriots, Belichick, or anyone else authorized the taping, saw the tape itself, or even had knowledge of the taping being done at all. That might be enough wiggle room to get out of a huge judgement against him.
In my opinion, I think Kraft has a good case against Tomase and the Herald. I am no expert, but I do have a journalism background (well, I was a journalism major in college). Whether Kraft actually sues is another story.
I'M not blaming it on the source. Just because I don't think they can sue for Libel does not mean I like the Herald.
But unfortunately, the "according to one source" is a key phrase, as the Herald could claim they were lied to and that wouldn't be libel unfortunately. There's also a fairly large precedent set that allows journalists to protect their sources, so they would never be forced to reveal the source. Not to mention that if they were going to sue them why wouldn't they have already?
I'M not blaming it on the source. Just because I don't think they can sue for Libel does not mean I like the Herald. It's just the opposite. But it's what the Herald says in court (which will never happen) that matters.
And again, if the Pats were waiting to see if what Walsh had before they were going to sue, that means that they weren't sure that they were innocent because they thought there was a possibility that Walsh actually had something on them.
The Pats were never planning to sue the Herald and never will IMHO.
Honestly, I think what the Patriots should do is release some false information to Tomasse sometime next year that would embaress the hell out of him and the Herald. Everyone on the Patriots should just lie their butts off all year to any reporter from the Herald...how's that sound?
Wildo buddy, just an FYI...the fact that the Patriots were or may have been waiting to see what Walsh had looks very, very good. It would be the right thing to do if they planned on suing the Herald. Obviously, no one on the Patriots staff knew if Walsh had filmed something on his own or had possibly purchased a video of the Rams walk-through from someone on the Rams staff.
If you said you had some damaging information about me and that you would go public with it, of course I'd wait to see what you had before I sued you. And if you had nothing, God help you brother!
So then it doesn't matter whether WALSH has the tape or not, if a SOURCE tells the Herald he does then the statement "One source said that Walsh has a tape of the Rams pre-Superbowl walkthrough" would be true, because a source did say that.