Dear Ms. Griffiths,
Thank you for agreeing to retract Ms. Paretsky’s outrageously inaccurate allegation concerning the burning of a nurse. There remain, however, additional issues which need to be addressed by your U.K. Guardian newspaper.
You say that Ms. Paretsky’s article “does not identify any individual or organization as responsible” for “violent attacks” at abortion clinics. That is incorrect. She names the “National Council of Catholic Bishops, the National Right to Life Committee, Operation Rescue and other groups opposed to women’s reproductive health and privacy” which she says “are almost all headed by men.” She says that “In the 36 years since the supreme court [sic] decided Roe, followers of these and other groups have performed acts ranging from murder and attempted murder … [emphasis added]” etc. I am a man. I “head” a national pro-life “group.” Ms. Paretsky’s article accuses an anti-abortion arsonist of attempted murder. The law of defamation makes false and disparaging accusations actionable even when those defamed are identified only by implication or as part of an identifiable class.
I appreciate your willingness to correct Ms. Paretsky’s scurrilous and false allegation that someone “poured petrol on a nurse and set fire to her.” But the “correction” you propose is inadequate. Based on The New York Times article on which you say Ms. Paretsky relied in making this allegation, you suggest that the record can be set straight with a revision which will state “… when a protester at a Cleveland clinic poured petrol on a lab technician, spread the petrol around the room and set fire to it.” But the New York Times article doesn’t say the arsonist “poured petrol on a lab technician.” It says the gasoline was “splashed in the face of a technician” in the process by which the arsonist “spread it around the room” and “set it afire ….” The New York Times story doesn’t say the arsonist “set the technician afire.” It says he set the “room” afire. There is nothing in the article which offers any evidence that he was targeting the technician for attack. Falsely claiming that he “poured” it on her creates the misleading impression that he specifically intended to injure her, instead of merely damaging the building. The section of The National Abortion Federation website on “Clinic Violence” which apparently describes this incident, makes no reference to the technician even being injured by the fire. The New York Times article you cite says her eye injuries were only “temporary.” That doesn’t sound, as Ms. Paretsky initially alleged, as though someone “poured petrol on a nurse and set fire to her.”
Even given the facts as they were actually reported by the New York Times, the conduct of the arsonist is indefensible. He was either an imbecile or a lunatic. But that doesn’t license Ms. Paretsky to exaggerate the circumstances of the attack for political purposes. She is either a very careless or a very dishonest journalist. Not only did she make an attack which occurred thirty-two-years ago sound as though it happened yesterday, she twisted the burning of a building into the immolation of a nurse. I need not remind you that defamation is no less actionable because the denigration works though innuendo. Her clear implication is that male-lead anti-abortion groups burn nurses at the stake (or at the clinic, as the case may be).
I insist that you confine yourselves to quoting the New York Times article verbatim, without embelishment, if you wish to avoid judicial review of this matter.
Respectfully,
Gregg Cunningham
The Center For Bio-Ethical Reform
P.O. Box 219
Lake Forest, CA 92609
Office Phone, 949-206-0600
Cell Phone, 714-240-6976
www.abortionNO.org
cbr@cbrinfo.org
==============================================================================
1John3:8 “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the work of the devil.” Torturing
babies to death is incontestably “the work of the devil.” But by the power of our Lord, CBR is
destroying that work, day after day, around the clock and around the world.
From: Isobel.Griffiths@guardian.co.uk [mailto:Isobel.Griffiths@guardian.co.uk]
Sent: Monday, June 15, 2009 7:11 AM
To: Gregg Cunningham
Subject: Fw: Terror in the Name of Jesus
Dear Mr Cunningham Thank you for your email. It is not clear from your email how you assert that you or the anti-abortion Center for Bio-Ethical Reform of which you are a director are identified in the Article which is the subject of your complaint. Nor is it clear what defamatory allegations you claim have been made against you in this Article. This was a comment piece referring to a number of violent attacks and does not identify any individual or organisation as responsible for them. We note however your comments on the claim made that ‘protesters at a Cleveland clinic poured petrol on a nurse and set fire to her.’ We have checked this with the writer Sara Paretsky who has provided us with a copy of an article that was published in the New York Times about an incident which occurred in the Concerned Woman’s Clinic in Cleveland in February 1978 in which it states that someone threw gasoline at a technician and about the room in which she was in and set fire to it. We attach a copy of the article for your reference. In light of the description of the incident in the New York Times we will amend the article to state that ‘when a protester at a Cleveland clinic poured petrol on a lab technician, spread the petrol around the room and set fire to it.’ Yours sincerely Isobel Griffiths
In-house Lawyer
tel: 0203 353 3878
Guardian News & Media Ltd.
Kings Place,
90 York Way,
London
N1 9GU