Claiming “enough is enough,” Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. is taking legal action against several media outlets for “fake news” reports that he irresponsibly reopened the school amid the coronavirus outbreak, sickening students.
In aggressive actions, the school pushed for and won two arrest warrants against a New York Times freelance photographer and a ProPublica reporter and threatened to sue the New York Times if it doesn’t retract its March 29 story that the school brought students back after spring break, “then students started getting sick.”
Falwell ripped the reports as “fake news” and told Secrets, “The bottom line is that we have no students with COVID-19, no symptoms. And it’s so sad that they want to try to turn this into something political.”
He added, “We’re an easy target, we’re conservative. But it’s sad that they would use something as grave as the virus that’s killing people to push their political agenda, and we decided that enough is enough.”
In late March, the New York Times and ProPublica reported that the school in Lynchburg, Virginia, reopened while other schools had closed as the virus exploded nationally and as Virginia instituted several shutdowns to stop its spread.
The New York Times headlined the article as “Then students started getting sick,” and it cited one student that tested positive and several were required to self-quarantine.
The stories spread through the nation like wildfire, prompting condemnations and criticism of Falwell, who has been in the media’s sights for his embrace of President Trump.
But Falwell said that the school never reopened and only invited students with “no place else to go or no place safe to go” to return, requiring them to follow the state’s safe-distance rules, similar to those in place at Virginia Tech, UCLA, and other big campuses. About 1,000 of the school’s 16,000 students are on campus today and are taking online-only classes like others at home.
Those in self-quarantine did so because they returned from virus hot spots such as New York, as national health officials have demanded, and did not test positive. The one student who did was an online student and had not recently visited the campus.
The state health department conducted two surprise inspections and found everything in order and in compliance with Gov. Ralph Northam’s rules. “All operations appeared to be in compliance with the governor’s emergency order,” said Jim Bowles, a state health manager before the New York Times and ProPublica stories appeared.
Falwell has requested retractions, but they haven’t come.
As a result, this week the school won arrest warrants against Julia Rendleman, a New York Times freelance photographer, and Alec MacGillis, a ProPublica reporter, for allegedly trespassing on campus. Falwell told us that each entrance has a no trespassing notice. Liberty shared copies of the warrants with Secrets.
He also raised concerns that the reporter and photographer may have come from hot spots, potentially endangering those on campus.
Liberty’s lawyer, Michael Bowe, also sent a letter (shown below) to the New York Times demanding a retraction.
“This libelous story has inflicted substantial harm on Liberty University’s reputation and caused it to expend substantial time and resources addressing. LU hereby demands that this story be retracted in its entirety, and that the New York Times and those who worked on this story immediately implement a litigation hold as potential litigation is imminent,” it added.
The school is considering legal action against other media outlets that went with the “fake news” narrative, said Falwell.
The New York Times and ProPublica said their journalists were doing their jobs. “We are disappointed that Liberty University would decide to make that into a criminal case and go after a freelance journalist because its officials were unhappy with press coverage of the university’s decision to convene classes in the midst of the pandemic,” New York Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy said of the warrants.
Falwell said that he is ready to fight further against what he sees as a liberal media assault on his conservative and religious school started by his father.
“We decided that we can’t let them get away with this,” he said.
