A federal appeals court held that a West Virginia daycare owner could pursue a defamation suit against a television station for omitting the fact that alleged abuse was tied to a single incident of child-to-child contact.
A trial court had found that for the station on the grounds that all statements in the broadcast were true, but the appeals court wrote about the omission of facts, “A reasonable jury could find that this statement [the statement omitting key detail] was defamatory, inasmuch as there is material difference between a daycare worker actually abusing a child in his or her care, and a daycare worker negligently supervising a child such that he or she is ultimately responsible for one child’s assault of another child.” -db
From The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, May 19, 2011, by Kristen Rasmussen.