{"id":44796,"date":"2015-03-13T20:33:31","date_gmt":"2015-03-13T12:33:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=44796"},"modified":"2015-03-13T20:33:31","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T12:33:31","slug":"national-post-appeals-50000-libel-suit-launched-by-b-c-environmentalist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/03\/13\/national-post-appeals-50000-libel-suit-launched-by-b-c-environmentalist\/","title":{"rendered":"National Post appeals $50,000 libel suit launched by B.C. environmentalist"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The National Post (Photo courtesy of heymiller.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

VANCOUVER — The National Post is appealing a defamation ruling that ordered it to pay $50,000 to a British Columbia environmentalist-turned-politician.<\/p>\n

Andrew Weaver successfully sued the newspaper, its publisher and several writers over four columns that were published in late 2009 and early 2010. The paper was also ordered to publish a full retraction and remove the content from it website.<\/p>\n

At the time, Weaver was a University of Victoria professor who had participated in a U.N. panel on climate change, though now he is a Green party member of B.C.’s legislature.<\/p>\n

Weaver alleged the columns implied that he tried to divert public attention from a scandal involving the climate-change panel by linking the fossil fuel industry to break-ins at his office. In 2009, hackers leaked thousands of emails from a British climate centre in a scandal that became known as “Climategate.”<\/p>\n

Weaver also alleged that the columns had falsely implied he distorted and concealed scientific data in exchange for government funding.<\/p>\n

During the previous case, the newspaper argued the articles were about Weaver’s public actions and words, not his character, and said they amounted to fair comment.<\/p>\n

The judge rejected the fair comment defence and concluded the writers were “careless or indifferent to the accuracy of the facts.”<\/p>\n

The Post filed a notice with the B.C. Court of Appeal last week asking that the decision be overturned, though the document does not outline the legal arguments the paper intends to make.<\/p>\n

In an article published Tuesday by the newspaper, editor Anne Marie Owens said “the case raises some important issues and we respectfully believe the judge fell into error.”<\/p>\n

Weaver could not be immediately reached for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VANCOUVER — The National Post is appealing a defamation ruling that ordered it to pay $50,000 to a British Columbia …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":44818,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","mauthors-the-canadian-press1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}