> After two months of being stonewalled by the Theranos P.R. team, Carreyrou told me an entourage of lawyers arrived at the Journal’s Midtown Manhattan offices at one P.M. on June 23.
Interesting how Theranos tried to threaten the Wall Street Journal. Threatening journalists, even through legalistic means, sounds like a particularly dumb move: if nothing else it proved they were on the right track.
Newspapers struggle to pay the bills, though. If it looks like a lawsuit will cost a lot of money, many papers will just walk. It also increases the cost of fact checking the story.
> If it looks like a lawsuit will cost a lot of money, many papers will just walk.
What is this assertion based on? News organizations large and small carry insurance to protect them from lawsuits like this.
Will the general counsel grill the newsroom leadership to make sure they can back up what's being printed and that they're not violating the law? Absolutely. But that doesn't mean they will be cowed by threats of nuisance lawsuits.
I'm also skeptical. The journalists I know would love a fight like this. The marketing advantage to the paper could be huge. And the US legal protections for newspapers are so strong that suits like this are very, very hard to win.
And that's just the general case. The WSJ isn't an ordinary paper; they can charge $400 a year because their readers believe they can get a business advantage. The moment readers think that anybody with a few lawyers can get a negative story killed is the moment they stop relying on the paper.
And if somebody did end up taking them to the mat, they're owned by Rupert Murdoch, a famously combative media boss and son of a reporter whose net worth is north of $12 billion. The guy started Fox News, which might as well be called the Angry Shouty Channel. I cannot think of a worse person in the world to attempt to intimidate with a lawsuit.
Look at the fun that Gawker [0] has had. Granted they're not as highbrow as the New York Times or Wall Street Journal. I haven't heard of recent stories of the NYT or WSJ backing down, but they are now very corporate, and make P&L decisions.
There was a time when newspapers took higher moral stands, but now it's more about P&L decisions.
it's ironic that a supposed evidence-based medtech company lawyer-ed up on evidence-based reporting, especially at wsj. their lawyers should know better it's nearly impossible to stop journalists once they smell sh*t. so one of the explanations is that they just want to find the sources and plug the leaks.
Interesting how Theranos tried to threaten the Wall Street Journal. Threatening journalists, even through legalistic means, sounds like a particularly dumb move: if nothing else it proved they were on the right track.