Just A Little Heavy Handed?

The Washington Post is reporting that Redskins’ owner Dan Snyder is pressuring Washington’s City Paper to fire staff writer Dave McKenna. City Paper is a weekly alternative newspaper published in the D.C. area by Creative Loafing Inc., a Tampa based company. Snyder is fighting mad over McKenna’s article entitled “The Cranky Redskins Fan’s Guide to Dan Snyder”. Snyder has apparently engaged some high powered legal talent (not me) to prepare a libel suit against the paper. According to one of the lawyers, Patty Glaser, the paper published “untruths” about Snyder. A few observations. First, based on McKenna’s article, maybe Mike Brown isn’t the worst owner in the NFL. Second, McKenna’s article is rough. But if it’s true, Snyder is wasting his time with the bluster. And third, even if portions of the article are false, Snyder is a public figure, and so he would have to prove that McKenna published the article knowing that it contained false information. That’s a tough standard. Maybe Snyder should reconsider shooting the messenger here. Or maybe this just proves his judgment really is as bad as McKenna’s article suggests.