{"id":326425,"date":"2026-08-21T04:20:40","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T04:20:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/326425\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T04:20:40","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T04:20:40","slug":"kai-spears-defamation-case-win-over-new-york-times-impacts-journalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/326425\/","title":{"rendered":"Kai Spears Defamation Case: Win Over New York Times Impacts Journalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tA jury in Alabama on Thursday ruled that\u00a0The New York Times<\/a>\u00a0defamed former Alabama basketball player Kai Spears and awarded him approximately $9.25 million in damages.<\/p>\n

\n\tRyan Phillips of the\u00a0Tuscaloosa Patch\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0on the verdict.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpears\u2019 lawsuit centered on how the\u00a0Times\u00a0wrongly reported that Spears was at the scene of a fatal shooting and whether the\u00a0Times\u00a0arguably getting the \u201cgist\u201d of the facts right was good enough.<\/p>\n

\n\tAuthored by Billy Witz,\u00a0the March 15, 2023<\/a>, story, \u201cA Shooting That Ensnared Alabama Players Could Have Been Deadlier,\u201d suggested it had a scoop with new reporting that Spears was at a shooting incident on Jan. 15, 2023, in Tuscaloosa, Ala., that killed Jamea Harris, a 23-year-old mother from Birmingham. The incident involved former Alabama basketball player Darius Miles allegedly retrieving a gun from the car of star player Brandon Miller, who was not accused of wrongdoing, and giving it to another man, Michael Davis, who was the shooter.<\/p>\n

\n\tAmong other things, the story expressed that Spears\u2019 presence at the scene \u201chad not been previously reported\u201d and that neither of the two bullets that struck Miller\u2019s car hit either Miller or Spears.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpears, who later transferred to Marshall University, was not at the shooting. The\u00a0Times\u00a0reported that Spears was there based on information shared by an anonymous \u201cperson familiar with the case\u201d who, it turned out, was mistaken. It appears Spears was confused with Cooper Lee, the manager of the Crimson Tide basketball team.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe story also described Spears as the \u201cunidentified passenger\u201d in a story section in which a reader might have drawn negative inferences about him. The story discussed how the school wanted the players to keep quiet and tried to distance itself from the incident. It also referenced a police detective who investigated the gun that had been transported in a car in which Spears was (mistakenly) reported to be a passenger.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn court filings, Spears has said he suffered from anxiety and distress because national media<\/a> outlets repeated the\u00a0Times\u2019 error and described him as somehow connected to a shooting. The\u00a0Times\u00a0also took a couple of months to correct the story.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe\u00a0Times\u00a0maintains that its reporting was not defamatory because it didn\u2019t accuse Spears of any wrongdoing and arguably portrayed him more as a victim, in that he was in a car that was struck by bullets. Defamation requires, among other things, statements that are untrue and highly offensive.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn addition, the\u00a0Times\u00a0has relied on the doctrine of substantial truth, which protects technically inaccurate statements if the \u201cgist\u201d or \u201csting\u201d of the reporting is sufficiently accurate. Although Spears wasn\u2019t with Miller at the time of the shooting, he was with Miller and other Crimson Tide players earlier in the evening. The\u00a0Timesalso pointed out that Spears testified he texted a friend that \u201che was \u2018involved\u2019 in the shooting\u201d because he had been interviewed about it, spent time with Miller and spoke with Lee who was upset about being in the car.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe\u00a0Times\u00a0also tried to debunk the idea that Spears suffered meaningful damages.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSpears, the\u00a0Times\u00a0wrote in a recent filing, \u201chas offered no evidence of any lost wages or other pecuniary harm. In fact, the evidence at trial shows the opposite: he was given a scholarship in the season after the Article was published.\u201d The\u00a0Times\u00a0also refers to Spears testifying that \u201cpeople \u2018rallied behind\u2019 him at games.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn May, U.S. District Judge Annemarie Carney Axon\u00a0denied<\/a>\u00a0the\u00a0Times\u2019 motion for summary judgment. Sher reasoned that jurors should be able to decide whether statements about Spears were highly offensive. The judge stressed that Spears \u201cwas not in the car that brought the gun to the scene, did not follow Mr. Miller to the scene, did not know about the shooting until after it happened, and did not know that Mr. Miller had communicated with Mr. Miles.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe\u00a0Times\u00a0could appeal the verdict to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpears v. The New York Times\u00a0has significant implications for sports journalism<\/a>. Coverage of legal controversies in sports can be difficult because of their complexity, especially amid industry pressures to \u201cbreak news\u201d and \u201cbe first.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor more on this topic, you may read \u201cThe Gist of It<\/a>: The Uneasy Triangle of Sports Journalism, Deadlines & Defamation Law,\u201d which I co-authored with Samantha Chavez-Salinas and which was published this year in the\u00a0Harvard Journal of Sports and Entertainment Law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A jury in Alabama on Thursday ruled that\u00a0The New York Times\u00a0defamed former Alabama basketball player Kai Spears and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326426,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[23666,3361,70,1208,12612,9,11,10,980],"class_list":["post-326425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-alabama-crimson-tide","tag-college-basketball","tag-journalism","tag-media","tag-ncaa","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}