After I won my defamation lawsuit against 60 Minutes Australia, The Age, and three of their journalists, The New York Times published a story whose headline and framing created the misleading impression that I had accepted a settlement rather than won my case. The distinction matters: the court had ruled in my favor; the subsequent agreement concerned damages. Although the article acknowledged the favorable judicial finding, its framing downplayed the significance of that victory.
Wikipedia then relied on the Times’ account to characterize the outcome as a settlement, undermining the public vindication I had sought through the lawsuit. The emails below document my efforts to persuade the Times to correct its reporting, particularly the misleading headline. They also show that I explained the distinction to Matthew Goldstein before publication. Despite those explanations and my subsequent objections, the Times defended its account.
Freedom of the press carries a profound public responsibility: to scrutinize those in power and expose government misconduct. In my view, the Times failed that responsibility in its coverage of Euro Pacific Bank.
Goldstein was eager to report that a small, obscure Puerto Rican bank was under investigation for facilitating tax evasion and money laundering. But when that investigation produced no criminal charges against the bank, the Times showed no comparable interest in revisiting the allegations or examining the damage its coverage had helped cause.
The omission was especially significant because the OCIF commissioner publicly stated that there was no evidence of money laundering or other crimes and identified capital deficiencies and inadequate internal controls as the grounds for closing the bank. Those distinctions were essential to understanding what the authorities had—and had not—found.
The larger story emerged through government records I obtained in FOIA litigation. Those records show that the IRS and its J5 partners pressured Puerto Rico’s banking regulator to act against the bank, coordinated the resulting publicity, and portrayed the closure as a victory against tax evasion and money laundering despite the absence of evidence establishing those crimes. Goldstein showed no interest in reporting the evidence I brought to his attention.
An investigation into a small bank is one story. Evidence that officials from several governments coordinated regulatory action and publicity to claim credit for stopping fabricated crimes is a far more consequential one. It raises fundamental questions about the abuse of government power, accountability, and the willingness of the press to challenge an official narrative it previously helped promote.
The Times’ refusal to pursue that story—or adequately correct its portrayal of my defamation victory—deserves scrutiny of its own. The emails below allow readers to see what the Times was told, when it was told, and how it responded.