The New York Times has been ordered to pay former college basketball player Kai Spears $9.25 million as a defamation lawsuit filed by the student comes to a close.
The now-former student took the “Old Gray Lady” to court after the paper published a story in March of 2023 that falsely claimed that Spears was a passenger in a car at the site of a shooting that took the life of 23-year-old Jamea Harris, according to Fox News.
At the time the article was published, Spears was an 18-year-old walk-on player for the University of Alabama’s Crimson Tide.
Spears was mentioned in the March 2023 Times article, written by sports writer Billy Witz. The writer identified Spears as present at the January shoot based solely on the word of a single anonymous source.
Witz claimed he accepted the source’s word because the source was a “high-level, professional person.”
“I think the way I was looking at it, Source A, by their job title and by virtue of their access to the transcript, videos and impound photos, was somebody who knew a lot about this case,” the Times writer testified about his decision to include Spears’ name in the story.
Witz, who started with the paper in 2008, also said a second source said a “white guy” was in the car and that this person was a basketball player, but that the source could not remember the person’s name.
Both Witz and his employers later agreed that Spears should not have been named in the story based on such flimsy evidence.
After Spears filed his lawsuit against the Times, the paper added an editor’s note to the story’s online version.
“Based on information from a person familiar with the case, the article erroneously identified that person as Kai Spears, a freshman basketball player,” the note reads. “After the article was initially published, Alabama’s athletic director and Spears’s father denied that Spears was present. The Times included those responses and reviewed its reporting, but did not conclude that any other change to the article was warranted at that time.”
“On Wednesday, Spears filed a defamation suit against The Times that included new details about the incident. Based on that information, editors assigned further reporting, which determined that the other person at the scene was not Spears but Cooper Lee, a student manager for the team. The Times regrets the error in the initial report,” the note added.
The New York Times lamented the decision in the case.
“We’re disappointed the jury found The Times liable for an honest mistake,” the paper said in a statement. “We thank the jury for its service, but believe the verdict and award of damages are contrary to law and not supported by the evidence. We are reviewing our legal options.”
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: Facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, Truth Social @WarnerToddHuston, or at X/Twitter @WTHuston