Rupert Murdoch's bad month continues

[meegbear]

The News of the World phone-hacking scandal continues to get the big headlines, but journalistic malfeasance by Rupert Murdoch newspapers is, as we discussed last week, not limited to Great Britain.

The woman who has accused Dominque Strauss Kahn of sexual assault is suing Murdoch's New York Post, which repeatedly (and in very large type) called her a "hooker," based on the word of one unnamed source. How reliable is that source, exactly? As Erik Wemple writes today at the Washington Post, part of this source's story already looks totally false. And the Post had documents proving the source's unreliability before they published their "hooker" story, which might make the suit more interesting.

The source claimed that the woman's union placed her at the Sofitel hotel in order for her to "bring in big bucks" as a prostitute. Which is incredibly silly, as the union tried to explain to the Post before they published. They sent the Post her employment packet. Wemple:

Clues as to how the woman may have ended up looking for work at the Sofitel are in the papers. The application asks how the applicant had learned of the hotel; the woman checked a box for "Agency." In the "references" portion of the application, the woman put down a worker with the International Rescue Committee (IRC), an agency that assists refugees with employment, among other things. When contacted about the accuser, IRC declined comment, citing policy not to talk about individual cases.

Nowhere on the form did the applicant mention a union.

Right. The Post is wrong and wholly irresponsible basically all the time, but rarely do they actually cross the line to actionable defamation. They might've, this time! (The Post could lose more money than usual this year! Plus, they just raised their newsstand price -- what timing!)

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http://www.salon.com/news/rupert_murdoch/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/07/11/murdoch_post