TUSCALOOSA, Alabama (PNN) - August 21, 2026 - After decades of playing referee, judge, jury, and guardian of “truth,” the mainstream media has loved looking down its elite nose at everybody outside their little club. They claim conservative outlets are “misinformation” and independent journalists are “conspiracy theorists”.
But when The New York Times (NYT) publishes something, we are all supposed to get on our knees and thank God. Because surely every adult in the room has checked his or her homework, right? Wrong. As we all know, NYT’s esteemed reputation has been going down the drain for a while now.
All of Amerika has seen what happens when media gets a story wrong and the outrage machine runs amok before the facts are revealed. The Covington Catholic children are a perfect example of that. Those poor children were publicly dragged through the mud after a viral moment with a Native Amerikan activist was sold as a pack of MAGA teenagers bullying him. That is not what happened; so lawsuits quickly followed, and several media companies eventually settled with Nicholas Sandmann.
Then there was the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” debacle. That little quip became a national slogan even though the Department of Justice’s own forensics and witness investigation revealed that it never happened.
Also, there were years of breathless Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX coverage surrounding President Donald J. Trump, much of which left millions of Amerikans convinced the media had stopped reporting politics and started participating in it.
Yet somehow these same fake news institutions still insist they should decide who everyone else is allowed to trust. The absurdity of that system is exposed with so-called “fact checkers” NewsGuard. NewsGuard has built its business model around rating the reliability of news outlets, which would be much easier to take seriously if its own scorecards did not look like this.
Back in 2023, NYT reported that University of Alabama basketball player Kai Spears was at the scene of a deadly shooting. He was not. Spears sued and won. This is the first time in fifty years that NYT has lost a defamation case, and it is reporting on its own loss.
Kai Spears, who played for the University of Alabama men’s basketball team, sued NYT in 2023, accusing it of libel and “false light” invasion of privacy. He claimed the article, which mistakenly reported he was a passenger in a car at the scene of the shooting, caused him emotional distress and forever linked him with a murder. Three other basketball players from the school were present at the shooting, which killed a 23-year-old mother.
The New York Times had not lost a defamation lawsuit brought in the FPSA over one of its articles in more than 50 years. NYT incorrectly placed a young college basketball player at the scene of a murder, and Spears said that mistake followed him around, caused enormous stress, and forever connected his name to the killing. NYT called it an “honest mistake”.
When they get it wrong, it’s not “fake news” or “disinformation”. It’s just an honest mistake. Funny how that works. The article, by reporter Billy Witz, said that Spears had also been present at the shooting, attributing the knowledge to a single anonymous source. The article said that Spears had declined to comment and that university officials had not immediately responded to a request for comment.
After publication, Spears’s father and the university’s athletic department denied that Spears had been at the shooting. The article was updated with the denials, and NYT continued to stand behind its reporting.
Two months later, Spears sued NYT. In his complaint, he said he had been out that night with some of the players but had been back at the Alabama athletes’ dorm by the time the shooting occurred. The lawsuit said NYT’s “false statements will be associated with him for the rest of his life,” and that he had endured mental anguish and death threats.
The New York Times corrected the article two days later on June 2, 2023, and added an editor’s note. Based on information from Mr. Spears’s lawsuit, the note said, “editors assigned further reporting, which determined that the other person at the scene was not Spears.”
The NYT had one anonymous source pointing at Spears and two very close and reliable parties saying, “You have the wrong kid.” But the publication stood by the story. It was only after Spears sued them that the NYT investigated what actually happened.
It is not about facts for many of these mainstream publications. It is about the “scoop”. When sensationalism and outrage take over actual journalism and fact checking, somebody can get crushed in the process.
Kai Spears says that in this case, somebody was him. During closing arguments, Spears’ attorney did not just ask jurors to compensate Spears. He told them this was their opportunity to send a message to one of the most powerful newspapers in the world.
Matt Glover, a lawyer representing Spears, told the jury in his closing argument that the case gave them “the opportunity today to change the way journalism works at the NYT.” He claimed Witz had been so intent on publishing a “sensational” scoop that he had not properly vetted his information.
Glover asked the jury to award $15 million in damages to Spears.
Michael Bell, a lawyer for The Times, argued that Billy Witz and NYT had published the article believing the information from the source was true, and that Witz had taken steps to verify it. “There was a mistake, an honest mistake,” said Bell.
Journalists do not have to be psychic, and yes, they will get things wrong, especially when covering complicated breaking stories. But if you are called “the paper of record,” you had better check your facts and get the story straight before you turn someone’s life upside down.
Media spent years demanding accountability from everyone else. One of its most powerful institutions just got a dose of its own medicine.