The New York Times is being sued for $250 million by a Hollywood actor over a story it published last month claiming he was at the center of a smear campaign against an actress who complained about his behavior.
According to Variety, the lawsuit from Justin Baldoni goes back to 2023 when he and actress Blake Lively were making the movie “It Ends with Us.”
The Times report, largely based upon a civil complaint made in California by Lively, painted the actress as a victim of sexual harassment by Baldoni and producer Jamey Heath.
Variety produced a text exchange between Lively and Baldoni in which she said he was welcome to come to her trailer to go over their lines.
The Times reported the incident by saying Baldoni “repeatedly entered her makeup trailer uninvited while she was undressed, including when she was breastfeeding.”
The lawsuit, reproduced by Variety on its website, said the Times used “‘cherry-picked’ and altered communications stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead.”
A Times representative pushed back.
“The role of an independent news organization is to follow the facts where they lead. Our story was meticulously and responsibly reported. It was based on a review of thousands of pages of original documents, including the text messages and emails that we quote accurately and at length in the article. To date, Wayfarer Studios,” the representative said.
“Mr. Baldoni, the other subjects of the article and their representatives have not pointed to a single error. We published their full statement in response to the allegations in the article as well. We plan to vigorously defend against the lawsuit,” the representative said.
However, Bryan Freedman, the attorney who filed Baldoni’s lawsuit, said the Times distorted the facts, according to USA Today.
“In this vicious smear campaign fully orchestrated by Blake Lively and her team, the New York Times cowered to the wants and whims of two powerful ‘untouchable’ Hollywood elites, disregarding journalistic practices and ethics once befitting of the revered publication by using doctored and manipulated texts and intentionally omitting texts which dispute their chosen PR narrative,” he said.
“In doing so, they pre-determined the outcome of their story, and aided and abetted their own devastating PR smear campaign designed to revitalize Lively’s self-induced floundering public image and counter the organic groundswell of criticism amongst the online public. The irony is rich,” he said
The Times report focused on how Hollywood uses smear campaigns against those in disfavor, using the spat between Lively and Baldoni as its centerpiece.
“There have long been figures behind the scenes shaping public opinion about celebrities — through gossip columns, tabloids and strategic interviews. The documents show an additional playbook for waging a largely undetectable smear campaign in the digital era,” the Times wrote.
The Times quoted a message from a publicist working with Baldoni to crisis management expert Melissa Nathan that read, “He wants to feel like she can be buried.”
“You know we can bury anyone,” Nathan wrote, with the Times reporting that the messages preceded a social media campaign on behalf of Baldoni and at Lively’s expense.
The civil complaint alleged that these activities were “‘social manipulation’ designed to ‘destroy’ Ms. Lively’s reputation,” USA Today noted.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
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