Wire Service Hacked; Phony Syrian War Accounts Purged

Reuters Building(Photo credit: stevecadman)Financial hardship has prompted major newspapers and broadcast outlets to retrench on coverage of global events, increasing our reliance on established wire services, such as Associated Press and Reuters, to keep us apprised about international conflicts.

Which makes all the more disturbing New York Magazine's report that Reuters was hacked into and two fake stories posted suggesting that the Free Syrian Army suffered major setbacks in its fight against the Assad-led Syrian government.  The Moon of Alabama blog and Twitter users noted that Reuters pulled two items that falsely reported Syrian rebels being defeated by the Syrian Army in certain districts of Salah Al Deen in Aleppo, where the FSA is well-entrenched.

The wire service admitted it was compromised by hackers and said it was working to prevent a recurrence.

Midwife Delivers $1m Libel Suit to New York Magazine

Image via CrunchBase
In Cara Muhlhahn v. Andrew Goldman & New York Media LLC (Case No. 10102846), a  Manhattan midwife is seeking $1 million in damages in a defamation suit filed in the Supreme Court of New York against New York magazine and a journalist over a 2009 article entitled "Extreme Birth."


The seven-page complaint alleges that the article "contained statements that were fabricated or based on unverified sources as well as allegations about which there were obvious reasons to doubt the accuracy or truth thereof." The plaintiff claims the article portrayed her as reckless. The defendants have filed a motion to dismiss the complaint, arguing the statements at issue were not susceptible to a defamatory meaning as they either constituted opinion or were accurate statements concerning the plaintiff's purported divergence from medical opinion.

The case has been written about on the Web sites of Jezebel and the  NY Observer.