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Newspaper editor to bloggers: Kick me more

I have no doubt that being crosswise with Virginia’s conservative SWAC Girl would be a pretty irritating experience. Apparently there is a bit of a feud between local newspaper editor J. Todd Foster of the Bristol Herald Courier (owned by the same Media General as our friends at the Richmond Times Dispatch) and a few of Viginia’s conservative bloggers.

I don’t care enough to get into the weeds of the dispute to see who is right. The issue that matters for bloggers and editors more broadly is the absolute lunacy of Foster’s reaction to one of SWAC Girl’s recent posts:

Lynn: This post is factually incorrect in a number of areas and, thus, is defamatory. First off, our three-member editorial board has not changed. All are still present and accounted for. Andrea Hopkins is going to medical school soon but hasn’t left yet. When she leaves, there will be two members of our editorial board remaining, with a third coming on board soon. Meanwhile, I left on good enough terms from Waynesboro that my company promoted me to editor at a paper five times larger. Finally, have you polled all of our readers on their views of the Wise County power plant? The average defamation suit, by the way, costs an estimated $200,000 to defend. That’s if you win.

J. Todd Foster

Having worked in newspapers for many a year, I know how journalists think of the jerks whose first reaction to a negative article is to threaten us with a lawsuit. We sharpen our keyboards to write something even nastier. So naturally, I assumed a real journalist wouldn’t throw around $200,000 lawsuit threats — we know how counterproductive they are.

Boy am I an idiot. I keep having faith in my brethren and they keep letting me down. When I asked Mr. Foster whether the quote above was his, this is what I got back (in full):

It is. I tried to email it directly to Lynn Mitchell. I prefer it not be
published, but I also want Ms. Mitchell to heed the same defamation laws
that journalists must. Since you have direct contact with Ms. Mitchell,
consider this a legal request for a correction of all errors delineated
below.

So let me translate. He prefers to make his legal threats out of the public eye and, oh by the way, since I took the time to check whether this quote was accurate, I am now the recipient of a “legal request for a correction.”

Is he implying that I am now on the hook for SWAC Girl’s words because he has given me a “legal” request? Sometimes it seems as if people have their brains surgically removed at about the same time they invoke lawsuits and lawyers.

But there’s a reason that frivolous lawsuits threats are anathema to people who care about the right to free speech. Mr. Foster is correct that such suits are very expensive to defend, which is why the mere threat can often be enough to chill constitutionally protected and factually accurate speech.

For a journalist to use such a tactic as his first resort is a disgrace. Maybe SWAC Girl is wrong. Maybe she or the blogger she was linking to owe Mr. Foster a correction. One thing absolutely is clear: 1st Amendment dependent newspaper journalist Foster has acted without the judgment you’d expect from a man with the responsibility of editing a newspaper.

Update: Another take from a newspaper guy here: “I try not to make a practice out of threatening bloggers with litigation. I’d have more success swatting hornets.”

SWAC girl thinks long and hard then tries to resolve the issue.

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