CHICAGO -- The N.F.L.‘s fight with The New York Times is still raging. The Times recently put out a report where it revealed more than 100 concussions were missing from the league’s study. In response, the N.F.L. demanded the Times retract the report, saying it was “false and defamatory.” Specifically, N.F.L. attorney Brad Karp took issue with the Times’ insistence that the league had a connection with the tobacco industry.
With closing line of letter, The New York Times sacks N.F.L.
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“Its sensational headline notwithstanding, the story did not show any meaningful ‘ties to the tobacco industry,’” wrote Karp. “Nor did it present a shred of evidence to support its thesis that the N.F.L. intentionally concealed concussion research data. By publishing the story, fully aware of the falsity of the underlying facts, the Times recklessly disregarded the truth and defamed the N.F.L.”
On Wednesday, the Times fired back with a publicly available letter addressed to Mr. Karp; their Twitter account especially pointed at “the last sentence.” You can read the letter in full over here, but what about the last sentence that’s so important to the Times?
While your earlier letter to The Times called the tobacco industry “perhaps most odious industry in America history,” you somehow fail to mention in either letter that it was your firm that represented Philip Morris in that RICO case.
Let the G.I.F. reaction commence.
