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A website is threatening to sue the Washington Post over being labeled 'fake news'

NakedCapitalism.com, which is essentially a financial blog, is looking to sue the Washington Post for defamation after the paper ran an article entitled "Russian propaganda effort helped spread 'fake news' during the election, experts say." The site has enlisted the help of D.C. attorney James A. Moody. Moody is one of the better First Amendment lawyers in the capital and has taken multiple cases before the Supreme Court, most notably as a member of counsel for General Westmoreland in Westmoreland v. CBS.

In a letter to the Washington Post, which was published on NakedCapitalism, the attorney wrote, "You did not provide even a single example of 'fake news' allegedly distributed or promoted by Naked Capitalism or indeed any of the 200 sites on the PropOrNot blacklist." He also made it clear that since the Post did not provide the source, there is evidence of "actual malice," a requirement for libel and defamation in American law, which was the damning evidence in finding Rolling Stone guilty in their trial against the University of Virginia.

Though the Post interviewed several experts who spoke on the possibility of Russia weighing in on election, their article did source the PropOrNot study, claiming that it “used Internet analytics tools to trace the origins of particular tweets and mapped the connections among social-media accounts that consistently delivered synchronized messages.”

The Washington Post article has been criticized as shoddy journalism by several different news outlets. The Intercept followed the Post's report with an article entitled, "Washington Post Disgracefully Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist From a New, Hidden, and Very Shady Group," which claimed that "the article is rife with obviously reckless and unproven allegations, and fundamentally shaped by shoddy, slothful journalistic tactics."