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Friday, March 29, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Mail Online Decries Ex-Freelancer’s Screed

MANHATTAN (CN) - A freelancer with an ax to grind against the Mail Online defamed the British tabloid with a fictional tell-all for Gawker, the news agency says in court.

Mail Media Inc., which runs Mail Online, filed suit Thursday in Manhattan Supreme Court over articles by freelance journalist James King that ran on Gawker's website last March under the headline, "My Year Ripping Off the Web With the Daily Mail Online."

In it, King says Daily Mail editors encouraged him during his tenure there between May 2013 and July 2014 to bury attribution from other sources.

King wrote that The Mail's editorial model "depends on little more than dishonesty, theft of copyrighted material and sensationalism so absurd that it crosses into fabrication," and that he saw others' work "lifted wholesale" from other sites.

He also claimed The Mail took a "buccaneering approach to accuracy and intellectual property."

When Mail Media, a Delaware-based subsidiary of the U.K. publisher, offered a comment on the article, King and Gawker "doubled-down" on the falsehoods two days later, according to the complaint.

Mail Media says they reran the original article, included its statement then added a rebuttal from King in which he described a supposed Mail policy of not linking to outside sources of attribution any higher than the first three paragraphs.

Decrying the statements as "demonstrably false," Mail Media says they are "replete with blatant, defamatory falsehoods intended to disparage The Mail and harm its reputation by falsely claiming that The Mail's business model is based on the systematic misappropriation of intellectual property, plagiarism of other new outlets, and publication of false and inaccurate information."

Editors there do not condone or encourage "dishonesty, theft of copyrighted material, fabrication, or plagiarism in the reporting, writing, or publishing of articles," to the complaint states.

Mail Media says it hired New York-based King as a freelancer in May 2013.

He allegedly declined an offer to work in the newspaper's mailroom four months later.

Mail Media allegedly sent King to its rewrite desk when he was accused of plagiarizing a New York Post article about U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

"Indeed, and ironically, editors at The Mail had to repeatedly remind defendant King of the need for proper attribution and to add hyperlinks to articles on which he worked during his time performing work for The Mail," the lawsuit states.

Mail Media says King's performance "significantly deteriorated" from there.

He worked sporadic shifts, mostly at nights and on weekends, in the outlet's New York newsroom, according to the complaint. In a 10-month span, Mail Media says the writer failed to show up for work at least 14 times.

What he did do required editors to "repeatedly" remind him of the need for attribution in stories and to add hyperlinks to sourced articles, the lawsuit states.

Before his departure, King then took to Facebook to discuss his "fantasies" about one of his editors, which included "kicking her right in the nuts and going home," the lawsuit states.

Mail Media adds that King wanted to be fired. His employment ended in July 2014, according to the complaint.

King first tried to sell his story to The Washington Post, but that paper spiked it after editors dogged down the facts, Mail Media says.

Gawker then picked up his story, knowing King was not a "reliable, dependable, or reputable source," according to the complaint.

With Gawker having "purposefully avoided and consciously disregarded information that would have confirmed the falsity of its statements regarding The Mail before publishing the articles to a global audience," Mail Media says it has had to "expend substantial resources to respond to the false statements, and by having its reputation for lawful and proper business conduct and integrity unfairly impugned to a nationwide (and global) audience, including to its readers, respective readers, investors, advertisers, business partners, and competitors." (Parentheses in original.)

The Mail's website is the "world's largest news website," according to the lawsuit, with nearly 91 million unique monthly visitors.

It describes New York City-based Gawker as having a collective audience of "tens of millions" in the United States.

The supposed "one-stop guide to media and pop culture" has refused to retract or correct the story despite demands, Mail Media says.

Gawker's interim editor-in-chief Leah Beckmann and deputy editor Hamilton Nolan have not returned requests for comment Tuesday morning. Gawker's legal department also did not return a phone call seeking comment.

Mail Media's attorney, Andrew Miltenberg with Nesenoff & Miltenberg, has not returned a request for comment.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.

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