Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Feb. 1 WorldNetDaily article by Art Moore declared the "Muslim Mafia" case "The First Amendment case the media refuse to cover," asserting that a lawsuit filed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations against WND-published "Muslim Mafia" co-author David Gaubatz, whose son apparently violated confidentiality agreements by acting as a mole inside CAIR to pilfer documents "has been virtually ignored by mainstream media." dutifully quoting lawyer for the defense Daniel Horowitz as claiming that CAIR's lawsuit "has no chance of producing damages, but it is damaging simply as it chills the First Amendment rights of defendants."
Hmmmm... where have we heard this before? Oh, yes, now we remember.
A November 2006 WND article by Bob Unruh declared that the national media was "ignoring" a "$165 million lawsuit filed against WND and two freelance writers who wrote a comprehensive series exposing Al Gore's record of corruption in Tennessee during the 2000 presidential campaign," which "would smash any judgment that has ever held up in such a court proceeding." Unruh followed up with a February 2008 article quoting WND's attorney, Larry Parrish, as stating, "If what WorldNetDaily did is subject to being the basis for a libel judgment, investigative reporting will just come to a complete halt."WND editor Joseph Farah is quoted as saying that "the largest defamation case in the history of the United States has not been reported anywhere outside of the news agency involved."
Eight days after that last article, WND -- after fighting the libel and defamation lawsuit filed by Clark Jones for seven years -- abruptly settled the suit shortly before it was to go to trial by admitting that "no witness verifies the truth of what the witnesses are reported by authors to have stated" about Jones, and that "no document has been discovered that provides any verification that the statements written were true."
Given WND's legal history, plus the fact that Gaubatz's defense against the CAIR lawsuit is centered around proving that the confidentiality agreement signed by Gaubatz's son as part of working at CAIR -- which Horowitz has refused to explicitly deny -- is meaningless because CAIR changed its legal name at one point, we're not exactly rushing to give WND the benefit of the doubt here.
