The Gray Lady might be spending and/or losing a ton of green dollars in the near future. That is, if they choose to ignore the NFL’s demand to retract their story labeling the NFL guilty of faulty concussion research and ties to the Tobacco industry.
According to Fox News:
“The NFL has demanded The New York Times retract a story that called the league's concussion research flawed and likened the NFL's handling of head trauma to the tobacco industry's response to the dangers of cigarettes.
In a letter from its law firm to the general counsels of the newspaper and obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday, the league said it was defamed by the Times. The NFL added the story published last Thursday did not "present a shred of evidence to support its thesis that the NFL intentionally concealed concussion research data."
The NFL also said it will "more broadly reserve all of the league's rights and remedies," a veiled threat of legal action.
The Times, apparently unmoved by the NFL’s call for a retraction, claimed that the league’s ties to “Big Tobacco” were well-established by Giants co-owner Preston Tisch’s partial ownership of a cigarette company called Lorillard. In addition, Tisch served on the boards of multiple companies that the Times claims played a “central role” in “misusing science” to hide the dangers of smoking.
For its part, the NFL shot back with evidence of “significant connections” between Big Media and Big Tobacco. Over 14 million pieces of evidence, in fact, which the NFL described as “far more concrete than the phantom connections contrived by the Times purporting to tie the NFL to the tobacco industry.”
Of course, the NFL and The New York Times clashing on this issue should come as a shock to no one, especially with the Times among the first to wage Concussion-Jihad against the NFL, at one point having written four articles on CTE for every documented case of the disease.
Now, it appears one of those articles led to a call for retraction and at least the threat of legal action. Whether a lawsuit will materialize, if the Times stands by their decision to not retract, remains to be seen. But the NFL clearly put The New York Times on the clock.
