proceed ma'am please the court my name is harry wise i'm here representing plate of appellants michael light egg and simply european news mike alighting is a british journalist who lives and works in vienna  his company central european news is a wire service that provides english language versions of news stories from countries where english is not the the language affords them to news organizations in english speaking countries like great britain and united states we sue for libel here over a post an article that was posted by defendant buzz feed on its website labeling the pla what buzz feed called the king of bullshit news around the world now that is what mr lighting and his client will be seen to be known for any time anyone looks on the web for them we appear appealing for the grant of summary judgment for the defendant seeking an dyn o vote review of the evidence we argue that the decision below is informed by three mistakes of a victim or judg nt tomorrow the st being an erroneous interpretation of this court's decision in chel a versus filipina reporters and interpretation that basically eliminated most or all of plaintiff's evidence from consideration by judge moore secondly we argue that he erred in not applying standard summary judgment rules that provide that inferences are to be drawn in favor of the non moving  without st ruling on the issue of what the libel is plaintiffs had asked the judge and raring to rule on this it is a question of wall from the court as to whether the libel is as defamation a false statement has been made about it scientific and the question is what what is the false statement what is the meaning of the full statement yes and the law is that that's the question that the court must move along in the st instance as it as a matter of law generally what happens in these cases if this is based on your complaint you allege the libel you allege the defamatory statement yes and here we have layers of press making statements about what is true and what is false and the cla was as i understand it that your client was making and publishing statements that were ascertainable be false about from news gas sources yes around the world and that was something that case the judge must determine at the outset whether what plan of says the libel says about it is true in other words we have a an article that bus rewrote which we attach to the complaint we allege that it libels us  three ways and judge moore o found that the complaint alleged three general allegations that were made in the article one that plaintiff's make up stories from out of whole cloth to that they make up quotes and insert those quotes in the stories of think if the statement is that your client makes up stories yes and they can advance specific instances in which they that backs that up well or  were not or not and it turns out those stories are true then i think they've defeated your claim of defamation well the i mean there is no two headed go i would think with if you had a story about which we included in our brief as a hyperlink the problem with i could just get away from the pentagon for a nd you don't contest that ten of the fifteen stories in the buzz feed story are our faustina well i haven't singled out every false statement in the buzz feed story i singled out the three general statements and to the extent that the rest of the story we have alleged you're challenging five out of fifteen right were charging we have three general statements one yes and said that the allegations concerning them are not true ok so then as to the other ten if there's false information in then you haven't challenge that doesn't that undermine your general  objection to to to to the to the broader seaman well again the r r allegation is that the that the story accuses us of making up these stories or making a quote to the extent that anything else in the story supports that allegation we would certainly challenge any window for example that that that's what we do i mean it isn't and the problem with what judgment decided is he considered none of plaintiff the proof as to the three main ones he is mr light excessive money he doesn't do that and i'm having difficulty is that judge on the same point to park made in a judge jacobs if it turns out as it seems to be you've conceded that ten of those stories are inadequately substantiated or perhaps potentially fauci challenge only five why isn't that enough to make the general characterization and that the challenges that buzz feed made e story about how do you fall on hard times mr light he decided to make up false stories his testimony that he doesn't do that and that they don't make up stories as to the naked women supposedly that we made up  argument from speed is that the entire team believes the stories that they were a story that they published yes and i've actually conceded that they did believe it so this the issue of actual malice evidence like the fact that they discovered that this chinese woman in the k f c was a true story they just took it out when they discovered that the story everybody thought was fake wasn't fake and they accepted suppose a debunks that aren't  against the new york times paling versus times that it does it is not the scene of why no of actual malice to doubt what you're publishing if you don't doubt it but the lack of doubt comes preconceived bias against the person you're writing about combined with a lack of investigation that it really do any journalism here they didn't do investigation they accepted debug from sno it please the court i'm catherine bolger on behalf of this is a strange defamation case and it's not because of the two had to go to the cabbage walking it's a strange defamation case because the plaintiffs who concedes as he must that  they bear the burden of establishing every single element of their claims have admitted to two hundred and fifteen dollars of the two hundred and sixteen dollars facts on which buzz feed bases its claim that concession coupled with the plaintiff's failure to offer any kind of evidence of falsity means that the decision below should be affirmed both on the grounds that the plaintiffs cannot demonstrate the material falsity of the article that's because you're just in to the general incorrect mr wise pronounced differently i don't know how to pronounce it ok in the cell case this court did hold that bland cryptic claims of falsities the ported by the credibility of witness might be sufficient to establish falsity in other cases but the st amendment demands more and that is what we have here with with a little bit of a kicker st of all i do think south stands for the proposition that the st amendment particularly requires more than just a bald denial but even if it didn't john saying then testified that he didn't get those quotes he didn't even work at c n n when that article was written he also testified that he had no idea where the quotes came from and mr ladley goaltimate lee testified that he had actually fabricated the database that showed that mr fang wrote that story for the purposes of this litigation that out that claim this is simply discredited if you want to talk about another scenario where and where is the concession that he makes so if no it was not that there was a failure to respond in fact articulated that he did not dispute the two hundred and fifteen facts in that i have that record say a better record than i expect he admits  the point just says in not challenging defendant's other two hundred and fifteen assertions of facts plaintiffs don't mean to concede that anyone's are particularly relevant or material to the issues raised in the motion doesn't contest their their truth face of that in addition to these in this whole list of two hundred and fifteen facts mr alighting testified over and over again that c n n had no reason no basis to know where the quotes came from in the article he does as a judge per pointed out concede that ten of the articles are not the basis of his claim that's at the at the statement of material facts at one hundred and ninety five he does not dispute the accuracy of ten of the c and stories discussed in the article and if you look at paragraph one hundred and ninety six mr lighton testified he didn't know where the quite quotes came from in the mr bieber story he doesn't know where the quotes came from in he he can specifically point to where the quotes came from in the twin cheating story he doesn't have any evidence of where the quotes came from in the underwear thief story and the thing the one i think is really telling is that when asked failed to carry his firm of demonstrating material falsity because he has said he cannot prove that the c n n reporting is accurate and just just briefly as accurate he can't prove that the reporting  figure or not of course arguing that mr lardy is an all purpose public figure we aren't doing that he has a limited purpose public figure that's the learmonth task that this court set out if you will forward with respect to these public stores he certainly has your honor st of all the backgrounds he wrote a series of articles in a newspaper he calls the press the paper of record the press has at which which set forth his entire business model and how he switched viral news then  buzz feed reached out for him to comment on the story a thing they did so often that mr lighting testified what a pain in the neck it was that buzz feed kept contacting him instead of responding to buzz feed he called his buddy at the has that to plant a story about the buzz feed article before it was written so mr lyon igs piece about the buzz feed story got published st and he did it in an effort to manipulate the situation such that buzz feed story was forced to be published on a friday night where mr lighting said he could control the traffic so in this case he certainly injected himself specifically into this story by manipulating the narrative and then he published a book about it and kept for the for the rest of the time that this lawsuit has been pending feeding stories to the press because that about this lawsuit in fact of the probably one tomorrow and that is how this has this has always happened so he has very much injected himself into this controversy and he's shown no evidence at all of actual malice and certainly not clear and convincing evidence of actual malice again judge because i keep getting back to cases says essentially is that when there is bias and that bias causes the defendant to ignore a piece of evidence in that story in that case it was another article published by the times then you might be able to demonstrate clear and convincing evidence at the close of discovery here there's no such evidence of one bit of evidence that that buzz feed ignored there is no evidence that plaintiffs don't fabricate stories anywhere in the record of this case not at the time their ticket was published and not now so regardless of the fact that there's a couple bits of loose language in some tech center around the buzz feed news room that doesn't it mount to a purposeful avoidance of some particular fact if you're not saying though that if by chance they published a not fabricated story that would establish their case two there are too many layers here and i thank you so many is no evidence that they published true stories there is plaintiffs have brought forward no evidence that establish that they have ever published a single true his right having said as much as john's part pointed out they've conceded that ten of them are false and in fact in the end the statement of material facts there's actually testimony from m and which he conceded that four of those stories that he did not challenge we actually got it wrong and buzz feed got it right that in and of itself we should defeat this case because that would be evidence of the substantial truth of the article all right thank you very much mr weiss you have two minutes of rebuttal with respect to bias with respect to proving reckless disregard for the truth the rule actually doing as they didn't know that c n n has reporters in china and in russia and in spanish speaking reporters so there are some pins that every time we have to quote from somewhere that somebody else be true because they're in vienna in fact that the innuendo is exploded and destroyed by the fact that c n n has reporters and joined the speak chinese and can and could see on television because it's now under spewed that the informant went on television to talk about the goal that that's how they could get the quote uniform and again there's a hyperlink to a chinese story with the former and and the goat so it's clear that we did not make up that story and as to what we may have conceded i don't agree that by not mentioning specific everything every factual assertion in the story that we  that they don't support the general libel that we do this intentionally as part of our business we don't make up stories then smith the editor of buzz feed when i asked him about hoaxing he said everyone gets