Project Veritas Loses Its Defamation Lawsuit Against CNN Because The Truth Is Just As Damning As What CNN Said
Very serious laughably ridiculous buffoon stunt journalists, Project Veritas, had its account banned from Twitter a year ago, a couple months before its founder James O'Keefe also had his own account banned as well. O'Keefe vowed to sue CNN and Twitter over the bans, and these plans seem to be going about as well as a standard Project Veritas special report: people too clueless to understand reality think it means something, but it falls apart under scrutiny. Just days after the threat to sue, Project Veritas did, in fact, sue CNN for defamation.
The core claim was that CNN's Ana Cabrera had tweeted that the PV account was banned for spreading misinformation" when the truth was that it was banned for violating policies on sharing other people's private information without consent." Leaving aside the difference between a thoroughly reported news article and a throwaway tweet, this... seems like a weird thing to sue over unless (like Project Veritas) you are really, really, really infatuated with attacking anyone who claims you traffic in misinformation.
And, this all went pretty much the way that you might expect, with a judge now dismissing the case, noting that even taking Project Veritas' complaint at face value, it doesn't fucking matter because the real reason that PV's account was banned was just as bad as the reason Cabrera claimed:
While Project Veritas asserts that CNN's statements implying that Project Veritas was banned from Twitter for spreading misinformation maligns its journalistic integrity," ... the pleaded truth of being accused of violating a policy aimed at protect[ing] individuals from coming to physical harm as a result of their information being shared" similarly maligns a journalist's professional reputation. In essence, [s]ubstitute the true for the false . . . and the damage to [plaintiff's] reputation would be no less." Haynes v. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 8 F.3d 1222, 1228 (7th Cir. 1993). Furthermore, while there is some difference between violating a policy by providing incorrect or misleading information and violating a policy by truthfully providing someone's private information (and potentially exposing a person to harm), the distinction is not enough to make the statement at issue actionable as both violations are similarly damaging to the journalist's reputation. Project Veritas's allegations and arguments do not plausibly suggest that the truth (as pled in the Complaint) would have a different effect on the mind of the average reader in terms of the reputational harm.
Basically, the judge is noting that the harm" here (if any) was no different if Cabrera had accurately described the reason PV was banned, because the reason they actually were banned was pretty bad in itself. And all this really accomplishes then (beyond being a SLAPPy nuisance) is to reinforce the knowledge that PV was banned for violating Twitter's policies, in this case, revealing private information they should not have.