MSNBC’s Joy Reid at Center of Free-Speech Legal Fight Over Retweets

[Sanguine]

In late June, as a fierce debate over President Trump’s family separation policy raged, a viral Twitter post caught the eye of MSNBC host Joy Reid. An activist, Alan Vargas, tweeted a photo of a woman in a “Make America Great Again” hat seemingly yelling at a high school student during a City Council meeting in Simi Valley, California. The woman, Roslyn La Liberte, was among a crowd that was said to have called the student a “dirty Mexican” and told him “You are going to be the first deported,” Vargas’ tweet claimed. Vargas wrote in the post, “Spread this far and wide.” Reid clicked the retweet button, sending the message to her 1.2  million  followers.

But the MAGA-hatted woman, La Liberte, didn’t actually say those things to the student. A week later, after local news coverage of the incident, Reid tweeted an apology to La Liberte and the teenager, saying, “It appears I got this wrong.” That didn’t stop La Liberte from filing a lawsuit Sept. 25 against Reid for defamation and requesting punitive damages.

Several of Reid’s social media posts are at issue in the lawsuit, but it’s her retweet of Vargas' comments that proves the most legally interesting. As Reid’s legal team prepares its response, the fight is spotlighting an issue most Twitter users likely haven’t considered: Yes, it is possible to be liable for defamation by retweeting someone else’s defamatory statement. “Certainly, a retweet is a form of republication,” says Marvin Putnam, an entertainment litigator at L.A.’s Latham & Watkins. Litigator Jeremiah Reynolds agrees, saying, “If you tweet about someone and say they’re racist, or retweet someone else [saying it], and you don’t have any evidence of that, you could be liable for defamation.”...

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/msnbc-s-joy-reid-at-center-free-speech-legal-fight-retweets-1158266

Really interesting story.