Yes, the context is that even after they were exonerated, Trump continued to go after them.
The 2024 US Presidential election
- Thread starter Phil C. McNasty
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If I recall, the ad was after the police claimed to have confessions, but before the accused all started recanting their confessions.
So if this is a debate about "it is bad if all it takes was an accusation" then the ad falls in a grey area, I would say.
Of course, as the other link you had about the defamation lawsuit shows, Trump has simply never accepted that they didn't do it, despite their exoneration.
How does that make the lawsuit frivolous?
Trump saying a lot of demonstrably wrong things to imply it is reasonable for him to still think of them as murderers probably falls in that zone of defamation where it can make it to court even though I wouldn't be remotely certain they would win.
Read the newspaper ad in post #1, 396. The only person mentioned by name is Ed Koch.
Filing a lawsuit and winning a civil court decision are two different things.
I read the first link in #1,391 and the newspaper ad. Trump didn't mention any of the Central Park Five by name in either of those. If they 'felt' that he was speaking about them personally, that's irrelevant from a legal perspective. If any or all of the CP5 confessed to a crime that they didn't commit because of shady police tactics, that's on them for not having legal representation before speaking.
If I said "If the sky is green, you are a pedophile", I have not slandered you, because the sky isn't green. If the CP5 were wrongfully convicted, they may have a beef with the NYPD, and/or the DA's office, the jury that rendered the verdict, the trial or sentencing Judge, or their own defense counsel. If they filed a lawsuit against any of those people or entities, most likely it would not be considered sufficiently interesting for it to be reported in the New York Post.
Is this true, or did they confess to the police under duress, and later recanted the confession(s)?
The defamation case has nothing to do with the newspaper ad, though.
I agree.
Why do you keep bringing up the newspaper ad?
Yes, they filed lawsuits against the city and state of new york.
Yes, those were reported on extensively.
They confessed to the police and then later recanted the confessions.
When it came to the trial, they pled not guilty.
The theguardian(dot)com link in #1,391. I know this article is 9+ years old, but I was replying to what was posted.
This is a quote from the article:
"But Trump’s intervention – he signed full-page newspaper advertisements implicitly calling for the boys to die –..."
I see the use of "implicitly" to be evidence of the author's bias. Most people who get their news from The Guardian probably cannot provide an accurate definition of 'implicitly', and most people don't read all of the words. They see 'implicitly', but think 'explicitly'. On the basis of that misunderstanding, a click-bait headline: " Donald Trump and the Central Park Five: the racially charged rise of a demagogue and a lurid paragraph header: ‘He poisoned the minds of New York’ readers form and express opinions based on emotion and an incomplete understanding of the truths.
from Wikipedia, re: The Guardian:
"The paper's readership is generally on the mainstream left of British political opinion, and the term "Guardian reader" is used to imply a stereotype of a person with modern progressive, left-wing or "politically correct" views. Frequent typographical errors during the age of manual typesetting led Private Eye magazine to dub the paper the "Grauniad" in the 1970s, a nickname still occasionally used by the editors for self-mockery. "
I'm immediately skeptical of any journalism in which a political bias is explicit, regardless of whether the opinions are Left, Right or Centrist.
Merriam-Webster defines implicit as "capable of being understood from something else though unexpressed".
You can't win a civil damages suit based on non-explicit statements.
If I said 'Tom Cruise is a homosexual', stated as a fact, I could potentially be sued, and potentially lose.
"Maverick" has been known to take milk in his tea, if you'll pardon my inuendo , states this implicitly, so the sentiment is capable of being understood, but reasonable doubt exists.
No one is.
No one sued over the newspaper ad from 1989 and no one is trying to win civil damages from it.
And that article seems to be about Trump's long history of racism, which the 1989 ad is an example of.
And yes, in context of 1989 and when the ad was taken out, it absolutely was calling for the boys to die and no one thought otherwise at the time.
(It was calling for other people to die as well, of course, since it was about bringing back the death penalty in New York during the height of the crime wave.)
Your point about journalism with bias is fine. People should be more media literate, lord knows I agree.
But I don't understand why you keep pointing to that 1989 ad when talking about the defamation lawsuit.
Indeed you could.
And you could still be sued, and potentially lose, depending on how well understood the innuendo is.
Defamation cases are very hard to win in the US in general, but "I used innuendo" isn't really a defense.
I was responding to the first link in post #1,391 from the guardian. It's old news, but the 1989 newspaper ad is also central to the ABC news link in the same post.
Quoting from the ABC news link:
"...The five, who always maintained their innocence..."
and quoting from the guardian link:
"They would all later deny any involvement in criminality that night, but as they were rounded up and interrogated by the police at length, they said, they were forced into confessing to the rape.
“I would hear them beating up Korey Wise in the next room,” recalled Salaam. “They would come and look at me and say: ‘You realise you’re next.’ The fear made me feel really like I was not going to be able to make it out.”
Four of the boys signed confessions and appeared on video without a lawyer, each arguing that while they had not been the individual to commit the rape they had witnessed one of the others do it, thereby implicating the entire group."
The two quotes cannot both be true. If four of the five signed confessions, without a lawyer, they have culpability in their own convictions. I think it's relevant that the newspaper ad was printed after those confessions were signed. Whenever an accused pleads Not Guilty after signing a confession, any subsequent testimony will have a taint of unreliability attached.
Still not an answer to why you are concerned about that ad given it has nothing to do with the lawsuit.
But sure, your position is that once the police have produced a confession, any recantation means there will always be some doubt about if the confession was true.
OK.
Not sure why you think that's remotely an interesting point, but ok.
Forgive this as it looks like I'm disagreeing but I'm not.
Just stating for the record, m'lud.
For the record there are heaps of cases with false confessions. Barry Scheck wrote a book in 2000 outlining literally hundreds of cases.
This case is quite obvious to see the duress. They were likely told (falsely) that the cops had witnesses and forensics and the only way he'll not go to gaol for life is to say who was the rapist. I'm sure after hours of interrogation they broke. After all, they were like 15 or something.
I'm not super familiar with the case so i might get stuff wrong. But it is a tailor made false confession situation.
I don't think you are disagreeing.
The confessions and their recanting is a major part of what people have had issue with the case from the beginning.
The confessions were... not very consistent with the facts or each other.
I know nothing about THIS particular lawsuit except for the information contained in the two links from post #1,391. The 1989 newpaper ad is mentioned in both links.
Unlike many readers, however, I don't draw conclusions from headlines, and I don't immediately believe something is true, just because it's posted on the Internet. I analyze what I read, with skepticism, as opposed to reacting emotionally to the gist.
Unbiased journalism is a thing of the past, and sorely missed. Whenever a reporter writes news from the perspective of their own beliefs, rather than from the facts, I'm less inclined to believe what they have to say.
For me, politics is more of a source for amusement than a raison d'être, and that especially applies to 'identity politics'.
