A U.S. Federal Judge has ruled that a lawsuit for defamation against NBC News or MSNBC may proceed to a trial by jury. The United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia ruled favor of an OB/GYN suing the networks for their biased coverage of his actions at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.
In the fall of 2020, Dr. Mahendra Amin worked in an ICE facility in South Georgia. NBC News, MSNBC, and other media outlets reported on the whistleblower who claimed that Amin had performed “mass hysterectomies”. The doctor was referred to as a “uterus collection” by the reporter. Subsequent investigation proved that Amin did only two hysterectomies in the facility and that he performed them both with consent from the patients.
Wood, in her decision to the Washington Examiner, wrote that “an average viewer would understand that Plaintiff is accused of performing mass hysterectomies that are unnecessary and without consent.”
The judge also added, “Multiple statements can be proven to be false.”
The Washington Examiner reports someone from NBC’s standards division flagged the claims before the reports went live. MSNBC hosts Chris Hayes, and Rachel Maddow and expressed concern over the veracity of claims. Both networks aired the reports.
Chris Scholl, NBC’s Standards Department, concluded that this story “boiled down to a source with an agenda telling us things we don’t have any basis for believing are true.”
Amin’s name was tarnished by the reports. You’ll see plenty of reports online that will tarnish his reputation after 2020, and they are all from left-leaning organizations and outlets.
Jeffrey McCall, a professor at DePauw University, told the Washington Examiner NBC News had “should have verified the claims more thoroughly” before publishing them. Amin’s case is strong.
McCall said that NBC could have been negligent for failing to confirm the full content of the whistleblower’s statement. McCall said that it was problematic for NBC to use subjective and abstract terms such as ‘ mass hysterectomies’.
McCall said that the left-wing bias of the networks was also a major factor in the problems McCall cited. They could have avoided the trouble if NBC and MSNBC had not been so dedicated to reporting with an Agenda.
He said that it was important for news organizations to have staff with a wide range of perspectives and viewpoints. “Activist media outlets, like NBC, may suffer from groupthink that can short-circuit thorough reporting and verifying.”
