Newspaper co. strikes out as defamation plaintiff

The 8th Court of Appeals in El Paso on Sept. 20 handed a victory to Belo Corp., publisher of The Dallas Morning News, in a defamation case in which a Mexican newspaper company sued Belo over an article in the News that allegedly suggested that the newspaper El Diario "soft-peddled" its reporting of more than 400 murders of women in Juarez, Mexico, in return for government advertising. In Belo Corp. v. Publicaciones Paso Del Norte, SA de CV, the owner of El Diario took offense at a July 4, 2004, article by News writers Alfredo Corchado and Laurence Iliff that contrasted the views of Juarez's two major newspapers toward the killings. While Norte de Ciudad Juárez has theorized that "the rich, the powerful, the government, organ traffickers, or Satanists have perpetrated the murders . . . El Diario takes the position that the murders are domestic killings," the El Paso court states. The court noted that the papers' editorial policies toward the killings have dovetailed with a decline in Norte de Ciudad Juárez's circulation and growth in El Diario's circulation. The publisher of Norte, the court states, "blames the decline on government officials whom he says have withheld government advertising and threatened local vendors who sell his newspaper." As a result of the News article, El Diario sued, alleging that the article created a "false impression that El Diario soft-peddled news investigations regarding the Juarez murders in order to obtain advertising from the government." The trial court denied summary judgment to Belo and let the suit go forward. But the 8th Court reversed and rendered summary judgment for Belo, finding that El Diario's owner failed to present evidence that Belo "knew or strongly suspected that the publication as a whole could present a false and defamatory impression of events."
-- Jonathan Fox