Vicki Iseman’s lawsuit against the New York Times never had much of a chance. Given U.S. libel laws, it’s nearly impossible for a public figure to obtain a judgement against a newspaper for defamation, particularly when the defamatory material is merely implied. This is as it should be. We don’t want to see the press intimidated out of publishing negative stories, and the marketplace is punishing the NY Times in the appropriate way, by plunging subscription rates and ad revenues.
So, it wasn’t very clear what Iseman expected to get from her lawsuit. Some supposed that she wanted the chance to dig through the Times’s records during discovery, and others supposed that she wanted some sort of official concession from the Times that its story’s implication was false. As far as I know, the closest the NY Times has come to such a concession are some mildly critical comments by its ombudsman.
Now that the lawsuit is settled, both parties are in the victory-claiming phase. Naturally, the Times says it is vindicated. According to Greg Sargent, Iseman says (through her lawyer) that she was looking for an official concession, and got it:
The Times memo [arguing that the settlement vindicates it] says in passing that a “note to readers” will run in tomorrow’s paper, and the Times says the note will merely repeat what the paper has already conceded about the story in past statements.
But Iseman’s lawyer, W. Coleman Allen, Jr., claims that the statement is a concession by the paper — and that it’s the concession Iseman sought. He asserts that the statement goes considerably further than anything the paper has said before and that it was agreed upon by the two camps after negotiations. He sends me a copy of the statement that will run tomorrow:
An article published on Feb. 21, 2008, about Senator John McCain and his record as an ethics reformer who was at times blind to potential conflicts of interest included references to Vicki Iseman, a Washington lobbyist. The article did not state, and The Times did not intend to conclude, that Ms. Iseman had engaged in a romantic affair with Senator McCain or an unethical relationship on behalf of her clients in breach of the public trust.
Allen says that the line her camp had sought was this one: “The Times did not intend to conclude, that Ms. Iseman had engaged in a romantic affair with Senator McCain or an unethical relationship on behalf of her clients in breach of the public trust.” The original article didn’t state an affair or an unethical relationship outright, but it seemed to imply both; this statement seems like a straightforward statement that neither happened.
“That was what we were particularly interested in,” Allen says. “We’re pleased that the lawsuit was able to be resolved successfully, with the complete vindication that Ms. Iseman sought in filing the lawsuit.”
(Via Instapundit.)
There’s no way to know what Iseman was looking for, and a lawsuit seems like a lot of effort just to obtain a retraction of an implication. (But I suppose wealthy people make these sorts of calculations differently than I.) Nevertheless, the question remains, has the New York Times previously conceded this?
I certainly never heard that they did (outside the ombudsman’s column, anyway). Now that Iseman’s attorney’s statement has attracted the attention of the blogosphere, I’m sure someone will go through the archives and find out who’s right.
Internet Scofflaw 