{"id":1081,"date":"2024-11-25T17:33:39","date_gmt":"2024-11-25T22:33:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/?p=1081"},"modified":"2024-11-25T17:33:39","modified_gmt":"2024-11-25T22:33:39","slug":"christian-media-company-apologizes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/2024\/11\/christian-media-company-apologizes\/","title":{"rendered":"Christian Media Company Apologizes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A Christian company apologized recently to a man it had defamed.<\/p>\n<p>Salem Media Group distributed a documentary made by former Christian college president Dinesh D\u2019Souza called<em> 2000 Mules, <\/em>which purported to explain how the presidential 2020 election results could not be trusted. \u00a0It showed various Georgia voters, asserting that they were committing a crime by voting illegally. One of those voters was Mark Andrews, an African-American. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation had cleared Andrews of wrongdoing, finding that he was legally dropping off ballots for members of his family.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Andrews <a href=\"https:\/\/s3.documentcloud.org\/documents\/23199291\/andrews_v_dsouza-ttv-salem-jdoes_10_26_22.pdf\">sued<\/a> Salem Media Company, Mr. D\u2019Souza, an organization called True the Vote, and other related parties for defamation in October 2022, alleging that he and his family received threats of physical harm, including death threats, as a result of the film and accompanying book. This spring, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2024\/05\/31\/g-s1-2298\/publisher-of-2000-mules-election-conspiracy-theory-film-issues-apology\">media outlets reported<\/a> that Salem settled the lawsuit with Mr. Andrews for an undisclosed amount of money. Presumably the settlement also required a public apology from Salem Media Group.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/2000-mules-film-apology-f1c2de96f17e72241761b4e6deaee5cb\">media reported <\/a>this past May that\u00a0Salem posted an apology on its <a href=\"https:\/\/salemnewschannel.com\/\">website<\/a>; I have been unable to find this apology on the Salem Media website. According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2024\/05\/31\/g-s1-2298\/publisher-of-2000-mules-election-conspiracy-theory-film-issues-apology\">media outlets<\/a>, Salem stated,<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was never our intent that the publication of the \u20182000 Mules\u2019 film and book would harm Mr. Andrews. We apologize for the hurt the inclusion of Mr. Andrews&#8217; image in the movie, book, and promotional materials have caused Mr. Andrews and his family.\u201d Salem also stated that it \u201crelied on representations made to us by Dinesh D\u2019Souza and True the Vote.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Thoughts regarding this apology:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Offender\u2019s intent: not wise to lead with a statement about the offender\u2019s intent. The listener doesn\u2019t really care about the offender\u2019s intent. The victim felt harm whether or not the offender intended to harm.<\/li>\n<li>Specific harm caused: Good apologies are not vague about the harm caused; they get specific. To say, \u201cthe inclusion of Mr. Andrews\u2019 image\u2026\u201d reduces the offense to something innocuous. According to his court complaint, the movie accused Mr. Andrews of being a criminal, one of many \u201cmules\u201d who not only committed ballot fraud but also joined riots in Atlanta, burned people, pulled them out of their cars and beat them up. (<a href=\"https:\/\/s3.documentcloud.org\/documents\/23199291\/andrews_v_dsouza-ttv-salem-jdoes_10_26_22.pdf\">Plaintiff\u2019s Complaint<\/a>, Para 41, p. 16). Although the film didn\u2019t name Mr. Andrews, his face was apparently shown several times, as was his vehicle, including the license plate. The offense was not just the inclusion of Mr. Andrews\u2019 image, but the implication that he was a low-life criminal.<\/li>\n<li>At least they didn\u2019t say, \u201cfor <em>any<\/em> hurt this may have caused.\u201d They said, \u201cfor<em> the<\/em> hurt\u2026\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Relying on someone else\u2019s representations: This is actually another offense, not a defense. It\u2019s rather surprising for a news organization to admit that it didn\u2019t verify the truth of what it published. They could have turned this around by admitting that this was another thing they got wrong, and apologizing for this too.<\/li>\n<li>Future behavior: A statement describing what they learned from this, and what they\u2019ll do to ensure it never happens to anyone else, would have lent more credence to this apology.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Christian company apologized recently to a man it had defamed. Salem Media Group distributed a documentary made by former Christian college president Dinesh D\u2019Souza called 2000 Mules, which purported to explain how the presidential 2020 election results could not be trusted. \u00a0It showed various Georgia voters, asserting that they were committing a crime by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apologies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1081"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1083,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1081\/revisions\/1083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}