Washington Compost Threatened With Defamation Lawsuit Over “Fake News” Claims

The Washington Post more popularly known as the Washington Compost has been threatened with a defamation lawsuit after claiming that hundreds of websites were publishing fake news. The Washington Compost provided no evidence or proof that any of these sites were posting fake news stories.

From Daily Caller:

One of the websites The Washington Post labeled “fake news” in a November story demanded a retraction and threatened the paper with a defamation lawsuit in a demand letter Sunday.

A lawyer for Naked Capitalism accuses WaPo of running a debunked list of “fake news” sites in the “sensational” story compiled by a dubious team of researchers, without substantiating their claims or giving Naked Capitalism a chance to respond to the allegation. The Washington Post’s actions constitute defamation, the lawyer writes in the letter published Monday.

“You did not provide even a single example of ‘fake news’ allegedly distributed or promoted by Naked Capitalism or indeed any of the 200 sites on the PropOrNot blacklist,” James A. Moody writes. “You provided no discussion or assessment of the credentials or backgrounds of these so-called ‘researchers’ (Clint Watts, Andrew Weisburd, and J.M. Berger and the ‘team’ at PropOrNot), and no discussion or analysis of the methodology, protocol or algorithms such ‘researchers’ may or may not have followed.”

Naked Capitalism is a finance and economics blog started in December 2006, with a stated goal of “shedding light on the dark and seamy corners of finance.”

This is good. The Washington Compost should be sued. They themselves have proven to be a fake news outlet by falsely claiming hundreds of websites were publishing fake news with no proof.