A former Soviet intelligence officer made the claim in a Facebook post, which the Daily Beast briefly published overnight Saturday The post The Daily Beast Publishes, Then Deletes Story Alleging Trump Was Recruited by Soviet Spies appeared first on TheWrap.
I’d say it was deleted after a threat of legal retaliation from the oval office, just like with the Maine governor.
Once upon a time that would’ve been a fight the news organization would’ve jumped at for the free publicity and easy win.
Now it just takes a tweet, and Trump turns those fights around anyway for his scumbag followers.
Which is weird, if they just said that person X said Y on Facebook then the person opening themself to being sued is person X, not the media reporting what they said…
Media can be liable for repeating libel, if they don’t make a due-diligence effort to fact-check. I believe the criteria to prove media liability are malice or reckless disregard for the truth. Sites like Facefuck displaying defamatory user-created content are more protected in that regard by the safe harbor provisions.