For independent publications, a SLAPP can be a real-life horror story.
SLAPPs are strategic lawsuits filed by bad actors that are intended to intimidate and financially burden newsrooms reporting in the public interest. The legal costs alone can threaten to sink a paper, and lengthy legal proceedings mean years of stress for publishers and editors; not to mention the countless hours lost to legal preparation and court appearances.
You probably agree that facing a lawsuit would be horrible, but you might think it could never happen to your publication. Unfortunately, alt-monthly newspaper the Erie Reader learned all too well that it can happen to anyone, even when you’re doing everything right.
Founded in 2010, the Erie Reader is a free independent newspaper serving the city of Erie, Pennsylvania and the surrounding community. Their focus had always primarily been the arts and culture of the city, but as the local daily newspaper was bought by a larger conglomerate and hollowed out, Erie Reader’s coverage of local news and politics became increasingly important.
The trouble began in July of 2022, when they published an opinion column from one of their contributing editors. The primetime January 6th hearings were happening at the time, and details were coming to light about local Erie politicians’ involvement in the Republican-led lawsuits aimed at overturning the 2020 election results. The opinion column in question highlighted those involvements, complete with links to information from the January 6th hearings.
A few weeks later, Adam Welsh and Brian Graham, the owners and editors in chief of the Erie Reader, were at the annual Association of Alternative Newsmedia conference in Chicago when they first heard a rumor that one of Erie’s congressmen was going to hold a press conference where he would announce a lawsuit against the Erie Reader.
Adam Welsh describes what it was like to confront the reality of the situation after the lawsuit had been filed and depositions had begun: “Once it set in that this was going to happen and that this was going to take a long time, it was kind of a surreal feeling of losing control of everything. We had just come out of COVID, and we barely made it out of that. Now we’re facing a lawsuit? I can’t imagine there’ll be a more difficult thing that we go through as owners of the Reader.”
To make matters worse, Erie Reader’s media insurance had lapsed during the pandemic, and they were without coverage at the time.
By chance, Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) was speaking at the AAN conference, and Adam was able to get connected with RCFP’s Pennsylvania legal team. They agreed to represent the Erie Reader in this case pro-bono.
However, because of the large amount of labor involved, RCFP would be unable to take on the entire case pro-bono. Erie Reader would have to find co-counsel.
“That brought on the other horror of this, which is the financial burden,” says Adam Welsh, “We were so lucky to have the RCFP and we were so lucky to find a big law firm in Saul Ewing that was able to give us a discounted rate, but even at that, I mean, it’s tens of thousands of dollars. It’s enough to ruin a business, to ruin a publication.”
This touches on one of the main benefits of Reporter’s Shield.
If the Erie Reader was a Reporter’s Shield member at the time, they would have had access to our legal defense fund. Those funds could have been used to pay for co-counsel, completely relieving the financial burden and saving the Erie Reader staff from a significant amount of stress.
The lawsuit dragged on for two and a half years. But, thanks to the lawyers at RCFP and Erie Reader’s co-counsel’s unyielding defense of the First Amendment, the parties were able to reach a settlement. Erie Reader made no retraction and no admission of liability.
Adam said the lawyers considered it a real free speech win. “The idea that we didn’t have to do a retraction or even a correction, or pay any money, was considered a real free speech win, but it didn’t feel like that very much at the time.”
The stress and financial uncertainty of the lawsuit had been a long and exhausting ordeal. For Adam and Brian and the Erie Reader, it would have been much better to avoid the lawsuit in the first place.
Adam feels that a Reporter’s Shield Membership might have been able to prevent the lawsuit.
He said, “In July of 2022, if we already had Reporter’s Shield and the ability to say: ‘We’ve got this money available to us and we’ve got a lawyer that can send some legal push-back right off the bat.’ That would have been key.”
The scariest part of this story is that if the lawsuit was intended to intimidate the Erie Reader, to some extent, it worked, according to Adam Welsh.
“To be honest, it did make us more tentative because it’s like, wow, we did this right, and we can still suffer these consequences. But we never changed our approach. The Erie Reader is just a little bit different [from other arts and culture publications]. We end up doing so much coverage of local politics and local news. In the months following the lawsuit, Reporter’s Shield would have made me feel more confident in that.”
Reporter’s Shield is designed to protect publications from the horror stories that are SLAPP lawsuits. Our membership program can help prevent these lawsuits by conducting a pre-publication legal review to make sure you begin from the firmest legal ground possible. Then, if you do receive a threat of a lawsuit, our legal partners can draft a robust response to show that you are backed up by legal muscle, and this won’t be the easy fight they were anticipating. And finally, if these bad-faith actors decide to move forward with a lawsuit anyway, Reporter’s Shield will cover your legal expenses up to a pre-agreed amount.
A Reporter’s Shield membership can give publications protection from perhaps the greatest threats they will ever face.
We believe that hard-hitting reporting is more important now than ever. We would like to give you the confidence to continue that reporting and the peace of mind to know that if you are sued it won’t be a horror story like this one.
** For full transparency: Erie Reader is receiving a free one-year Reporter’s Shield Membership for allowing us to share their story.
