Someone posted an excerpt of this on X today and it's apparently real. An individual in New York has filed a $50 million lawsuit against the NY Times over its refusal to use the word "genocide" when talking about Israel's war against Gaza. Here's how the complaint opens:
Beginning shortly after October 7, 2023, The New York Times laundered genocide from her consumers’ minds.
The NYT did so deceptively, deliberately and systematically.
To disclose its deception would prove the Paper of Record’s propaganda for genocide...
The New York Times – in order to deceive the public about Israel’s genocide – forbade (among other words and phrases) the use of the word genocide when reporting on the genocide.
Ascertaining a need to ban the use of the word genocide is prima facie evidence that the censor knows that a genocide is being perpetrated. If no NYT writer would naturally think to use the word, there’d be no need to ban it.
This is apparently all based on a memo written by a couple of editors telling reporters not to use the word "genocide" because that word had a specific definition. The author of this complaint then argues that the Times used a rarefied definition of genocide.
The New York Times instead insisted exclusively upon the hyper-specialized definition (unknown, even, to the vast majority of lawyers) that exists only with the International Court of Justice ("ICJ") at the generally unknown and murky global intersection of international law and geopolitics...
The Paper of Record ignored the Convention's definition, ignored the dictionary definition, ignored common parlance and ultimately ignored the ICJ.
There's also a long section of the complaint focused on the publication of a story about rape as a weapon of war used by Palestinians against Israelis.
On December 28, 2023, the NYT published the infamous article titled “‘Screams Without Words’: Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7” written by Jeffrey Gettelman, Anat Schwartz and Adam Sella (“Screams”)...
But Screams was fabricated from whole-cloth.
Indeed, behind the scenes at the NYT, Screams was, in fact, heavily criticized – even before publication – as factually inaccurate by NYT writers.
Okay, but even if you buy all of that criticism of the coverage, how does it translate into a $50 million payday for a guy in Queens? The answer to that question is the best part of the complaint. You see, the reader left without confirmation of his hatred for Israel from the NY Times has really suffered emotionally.
Plaintiff suffered significant psychological and emotional injury as a direct and proximate result of The New York Times’ propaganda.
Plaintiff cried himself to sleep on numerous occasions and was wrought by insomnia on others. Plaintiff had compromised health through stress and a profound feeling of helplessness.
Plaintiff had the sense of his own insanity by virtue of the gaslighting and naked hypocrisy. An obsession for truth began to grip him.
Heightened depression and anxiety followed from The New York Times’ persistent effort to help the genocide.
Plaintiff lost friends and family members, at least in part, over The New York Times’ coverage of Palestine. Avid NYT consumers refuse to believe that the NYT would get something so colossally wrong; and then not retract the colossal blunder. ‘How,’ they wonder incredulously, ‘could any independent media source have superior knowledge to The New York Times?’ ‘How’, they wonder incredulously ‘could the New York Times pedal nothing more than propaganda?’
This really paints a picture of who this person is, doesn't it?
And at the end of all this, the lawyer asks that this be made into a class action suit for everyone who is upset with the NY Times' coverage of Gaza. The complaint then asks for three things, an injunction forcing the Times to offer equal time to people who share the plaintiff's views, an injunction requiring the Times to paste a safety warning above its coverage "Warning: Propaganda," and finally the aforementioned $50 million. And the complaint says that's a minimum figure. They might want more.
The Times has asked for a judge to dismiss it, noting that the complaint is about constitutionally protected speech.
In his Opposition, Plaintiff effectively acknowledges that New York’s consumer protection law, GBL § 349, cannot be validly applied to punish constitutionally protected speech. He argues, however, that The Times’s reporting on the war in Gaza is nevertheless actionable because (according to him) it is “false” and it is “propaganda,” and false speech and propaganda should be exempt from the First Amendment. These arguments are meritless and lack any basis in law. There are no such exceptions to the First Amendment, as decades of the Supreme Court’s First Amendment jurisprudence and numerous lower court decisions demonstrate.
Regular readers know I'm a frequent critic of the NY Times but this seems like a pretty clear case of free speech. Disagreeing with the Times is everyone's right, but the way to do that is by publishing your own objections, i.e. more speech, not by trying to sue them into adopting your viewpoint.
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