That story was picked up and run with by news outlets and blogs all over the country because of who he was. I think that’s fairly clear that he would be considered a public figure.

lawsuit, bj, lawsuit. they must have taught u that at bc

Raji wouldn’t win a lawsuit. There are two standards for libel.

For private people, you have to prove negligence according to the standards of the profession. He would have a case there.

But, he would be a public figure, so he would have to prove actual malice. He would need to show that SI conspired to destroy his reputation, rather than doing so unintentionally.

“An anonymous source has revealed today that Sports Illustrated is declaring bankruptcy and will shut its offices down on May 1st. The unnamed source, who smelled of lattes, declared it a sad day for sports journalism and for America.”

Now, think anyone running with that wouldn’t try to corroborate it? Isn’t that the very point of journalism??

There was a tape.

Ah, so you’ve seen it?

I forgot how easy it is to actually go ahead and get the test results for the players from the combine since I’m pretty sure the NFL just notified the teams this week of who failed…. but ya this would’ve been real easy for SI to go and corroborate

Yeah, you’re right. We shouldn’t expect SI to report and do their job. Try to get the test results. That would be difficult. It’s perfectly fine to run a story based on some anonymous source (who turned out to be wrong) without corroborating it.

Tomase reported that there was a tape,

There was a tape.
If Raji case it was reported there was a drug test and that he failed.
In Tomase case reported there was tape and speculation of waht was on it, knowing full well that it was specualtion because if I recall we knew he did not watch the tape.