Staff Reports
Oklahoma’s largest newspaper, The Oklahoman, has found itself in hot water after erroneously accusing a sports broadcaster of racism. And boy, are they paying the price for their mistake! A jury has ordered the newspaper to fork over a whopping $25 million to Scott Sapulpa, the innocent victim of their false accusations. Talk about a costly blunder!
Oklahoma Newspaper Must Pay $25 Million to Man They Smeared As Racisthttps://t.co/rcwlIi87tg
— RedState (@RedState) February 7, 2024
The incident occurred back in March 2021 when players from the Norman High School girls basketball team decided to take a knee in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Now, one might think that watching a basketball game would be a nice escape from the political drama of the day, but nope! Instead, audiences were treated to a live commentator going on a racist rant filled with slurs directed at the kneeling players. Yikes!
But here’s where The Oklahoman truly dropped the ball. Instead of properly identifying the culprit, they wrongly accused Scott Sapulpa of being the racist broadcaster. Oops! It turned out to be his partner, Matt Rowan. The newspaper claims they corrected the story within a couple of hours, but that didn’t stop Sapulpa from filing a defamation lawsuit.
Now, any sane person would think that a swift correction would negate any harm caused, right? Well, not according to Sapulpa’s lawyer, who insisted her client suffered immensely from the ordeal. She claims that Sapulpa received threats, hate calls, and had his reputation tarnished. Frankly, this seems like a case of overreaction to me. I mean, the paper corrected its mistake, what more do they want?
Of course, Gannett, the parent company that owns The Oklahoman, has stated that they will appeal the decision. And who can blame them? There was no evidence presented during the trial that the newspaper intentionally tried to harm Sapulpa or knowingly reported falsehoods. It’s just another case of the judicial system handing out ridiculous judgments that make zero sense.
Interestingly, Matt Rowan, the actual racist commentator, attributed his outburst to high blood sugar levels. While he apologized for his offensive remarks, he claimed that his diabetes caused him to become disoriented and say inappropriate things. I don’t know about you, but that explanation sounds like he’s grasping at straws. Sure, blame it on the diabetes, why don’t you?
This case is eerily similar to that of Nicholas Sandmann, the Covington Catholic High School student who was falsely labeled as racist by various media outlets. Just like Sapulpa, Sandmann ended up scoring big after filing defamation lawsuits and reaching settlements with major news organizations. It’s a shame that innocent people have to go through all this trouble just to clear their names. It’s a sad day for truth and justice.
