A Federal judge in Houston yesterday threw out most of a $222.7 million award against Dow Jones & Company in what was the largest libel verdict in history.

The judge, Ewing Werlein Jr., set aside $200 million in punitive damages against the company but let stand a $22.7 million award in actual damages. The verdict, won in March by a Houston brokerage firm, stemmed from a 1993 article about the firm in The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones’s flagship newspaper.

The jury in the Dow Jones case found that five of eight statements from the Journal article were false and defamatory to the firm, known as MMAR. Less than a month after publication of the article, written by Laura Jereski, the firm went out of business.

The article described how MMAR had become powerful selling mortgage-backed securities. But it said that the group was reckless in dealing with its clients, that it had contributed to $50 million in losses by a Louisiana state pension plan and that it was under investigation by regulatory agencies.

During the trial, the principals of MMAR attributed the firm’s demise to the Journal article.

In a one-paragraph statement last night, Dow Jones repeated what it said was its belief that ”the article chronicled, but did not cause, the collapse of MMAR’s business.”

While reduced, the judgment against Dow Jones follows a number of recent verdicts against media companies. Knight-Ridder settled a $24 million libel award last summer. And ABC News had a $5.5 million verdict against it earlier this year in a fraud and trespass suit stemming from a hidden-camera report about the Food Lion grocery chain.

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/24/business/award-is-cut-in-dow-jones-libel-case.html
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It would be wise for a print or media outlet to avoid negative or adverse reporting on a financial firm and subsequent lawsuits and damage awards.

They all promote their side of the filed in whatever way they can. It is up to the consumer of such information to establish the factual and contextual truth since neither is a given.

What is it with you people that have a beef with Fox News? Do you think Dan Rather at CBS was a shining beacon of objectivity? Do you believe everything you see on 60 minutes? What about the credibility of Dateline NBC after they staged the explosion of that truck? Peter Jennings of ABC News characterizing the 994 Republican sweep as a “temper tantrum?” Do I need to even mention Keith Olbermann or anything an MSNBC (the Obama network)? Put down the Kool Aid 151 and wake up. I don’t suggest that you watch any of it or that you believe any of it. However, if you think that the government needs to mediate what the Fourth Estate does, you are either a closet fascist or a rube.

This is the basic conflict-of-interest that exists between the corporate media and you as an investor or trader.