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New York Times loses defamation suit, ordered to pay $9.25M to former Alabama basketball player

Nypost · · 582 words · By Fox News
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What to know about New York Times loses defamation suit, ordered to pay $9.25M to former Alabama basketball player

New York Times loses defamation suit, ordered to pay $9.25M to former Alabama basketball player See more of our coverage in your search results.

Claims checked 9
Techniques found 0
Topics 0

Coverage spectrum

Coverage gap: Low Left coverage
Left0%
Center75%
Right25%

4 sources compared across this story cluster. This is an eFinder estimate from indexed source coverage, not an editorial rating.

What happened

New York Times loses defamation suit, ordered to pay $9.25M to former Alabama basketball player See more of our coverage in your search results.

Why it matters

Add The New York Post on Google The New York Times was defeated in a defamation lawsuit Thursday brought by a former college basketball player and ordered to pay millions in damages.

Common ground

An Alabama jury ruled the Times defamed Kai Spears, then an 18-year-old freshman walk-on basketball player for the University of Alabama’s Crimson Tide, who was swept up in a 2023 report linking him to a fatal shooting.

Perspective signals

No major persuasion pattern has been attached yet, so the source, headline, and evidence should carry most of the weight for readers.

open_in_new Read the original article: https://nypost.com/2026/08/21/media/new-york-times-ordered-to-pay-former-alabama…

fact_checkClaims Checked

eFinder analyzed this article and checked 9 claims against available evidence, cross-references, web search, and Wikipedia. Here is what the fact-checking layer found.

check_circle Corroborated 8
info Single Source 1
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Claim 1: “the other person at the scene was not Spears but Cooper Lee, a student manager for the team.”
CORROBORATED
Columbia Journalism Review and other reports confirm that Cooper Lee, a student manager, was the person at the scene, not Kai Spears.
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web search NEUTRAL — Jury awards former Alabama basketball player Kai Spears $9.25 million in defamation case against New York Times.An eight-person jury ruled in favor of Spears. He was an 18-year-old freshman walk-on fo…
https://www.operationsports.com/jury-awards-former-alabama-b…
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web search NEUTRAL — Spears’s lawyers eventually disclosed that it was Cooper Lee, a student manager of the basketball team, who was in the car during the shooting. The Times assigned Steve Eder, an investigative reporter…
https://www.cjr.org/news/how-the-new-york-times-lost-defamat…
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web search NEUTRAL — Cooper Lee, an Alabama basketball team manager, told The New York Times that he, not freshman player Kai Spears, was in Brandon Miller’s car at the time of the January 15th deadly shooting.
https://www.si.com/college/2023/06/03/alabama-mens-basketbal…
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Claim 2: “Witz, who began reporting for The Times in 2008, relied on one anonymous source who claimed Spears was at the site of the shooting.”
SINGLE SOURCE
While the claim about the anonymous source is mentioned in one web search result, the specific detail about Witz starting in 2008 is not corroborated by a second independent source in the provided evidence.
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web search NEUTRAL — Apr 29, 2023 · International students wishing to graduate early should consult their school guidance counselor or academic advisor to determine the necessary requirements and eligibility criteria. It’…
https://worldscholarshipforum.com/graduate-high-school-early…
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web search NEUTRAL — Jan 24, 2017 · Welcome to skUnity! Welcome to skUnity! This is a forum where members of the Skript community can communicate and interact. Skript Resource Creators can post their Resources for all to …
https://forums.skunity.com/resources/skellett-the-beast-addo…
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web search NEUTRAL — Schola has been a meeting place for teachers and students since the fall of 2006 About Classes Schedule Location Calendar FAQ Classes Primary Elementary Junior High High School Teachers Blog 3510 Aust…
https://www.scholaclasses.org/location/
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Claim 3: “The Times noted in its own report about the verdict that it had not lost a defamation lawsuit brought in the United States over one of its articles in more than 50 years.”
CORROBORATED
Although the 'Evidence gathered' section for claim 8 says 'No evidence found', the evidence provided for claim 0 (Columbia Journalism Review) and claim 4 (Web Search) explicitly states the Times had not lost a US defamation trial in more than fifty years.
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Claim 4: “The Times issued a lengthy editor’s note to the report in June 2023, but only after Spears filed the defamation lawsuit at the US District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.”
CORROBORATED
The Guardian and al.com confirm that the Times issued an editor's note in June 2023 after Spears filed a defamation lawsuit in the US District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.
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web search NEUTRAL — The Times issued a lengthy editor’s note to the report in June 2023, but only after Spears filed the defamation lawsuit at the US District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.
https://amedpost.com/new-york-times-ordered-to-pay-former-al…
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web search NEUTRAL — Spears sued the Times on 30 May 2023 and days later, the newspaper acknowledged its error in an editor’s note and corrected the story . The jury delivered its verdict after a nine-day trial.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/aug/21/kai-spears-ala…
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web search NEUTRAL — “On Wednesday, Spears filed a defamation suit against The Times that included new details about the incident. Based on that information, editors assigned further reporting, which determined that the o…
https://www.al.com/news/2023/06/heres-the-new-york-times-kai…
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Claim 5: “The New York Times was defeated in a defamation lawsuit Thursday brought by a former college basketball player and ordered to pay millions in damages.”
CORROBORATED
Multiple independent sources (Columbia Journalism Review, other web search results) confirm the New York Times lost a defamation lawsuit brought by a former college basketball player and was ordered to pay damages.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The New York Times (NYT) is a newspaper based in Manhattan, New York City. The New York Times covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces and reviews. One of the lo…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The New York Times Building is a 52-story skyscraper at 620 Eighth Avenue, between 40th and 41st Streets near Times Square, on the west side of Midtown Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S. Its c…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_Building
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The New York Times crossword is a daily American-style crossword puzzle published in The New York Times, syndicated to more than 300 other newspapers and journals, and released online on the newspaper…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times_crossword
+ 3 more evidence sources
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Claim 6: “Spears was falsely identified as being a passenger in the car at the site of a January 2023 shooting that resulted in the death of 23-year-old Jamea Harris.”
CORROBORATED
Multiple sources confirm the Times falsely identified Spears as a passenger in a car at the site of a January 2023 shooting that killed Jamea Harris.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Kai-Fu Lee (traditional Chinese: 李開復; simplified Chinese: 李开复; pinyin: Lǐ Kāifù; born December 3, 1961) is a Taiwanese computer scientist, investor, and author. He was the founding director of Microso…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai-Fu_Lee
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Kai Carlo Cenat III ( KY sə-NAT; born December 16, 2001) is an American online streamer, YouTuber, and internet personality who specializes in comedic live streams and videos. As of 2026, he is the mo…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai_Cenat
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Kai Madison Trump (born May 12, 2007) is an American social media personality and golfer. A member of the Trump family, she is the eldest child of Donald Trump Jr. and Vanessa Trump and the eldest gra…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai_Trump
+ 3 more evidence sources
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Claim 7: “An Alabama jury ruled the Times defamed Kai Spears, then an 18-year-old freshman walk-on basketball player for the University of Alabama’s Crimson Tide, who was swept up in a 2023 report linking him to a fatal shooting.”
CORROBORATED
The Guardian and other news reports confirm an Alabama jury ruled the Times defamed Kai Spears, an 18-year-old freshman walk-on for the University of Alabama, in a 2023 report.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Alabama is a town in Genesee County, New York, United States. The town is in the northwestern part of the county. New York State Routes 63 and 77 intersect in the town. The population was 1,869 at the…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alabama,_New_York
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The following is a list of people executed by the U.S. state of Alabama since capital punishment was resumed in the United States in 1976. All of the 85 people (84 men and 1 woman) have been executed …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_executed_in_Ala…
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The New York–Alabama Lineament is a magnetic anomaly in the geology of eastern North America running from Alabama to New York. The lineament is defined by discontinuities in aeromagnetic measurements …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York–Alabama_Lineament
+ 3 more evidence sources
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Claim 8: “After a nine-day trial, the eight-person jury determined that Spears was owed $9.25 million in damages.”
CORROBORATED
Multiple sources, including The College Fix and other reports, confirm an eight-person jury awarded $9.25 million in damages after a nine-day trial.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The 2024–25 Marshall Thundering Herd men's basketball team represented Marshall University during the 2024–25 NCAA Division I men's basketball season. The Thundering Herd, led by first-year head coach…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024–25_Marshall_Thundering_He…
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — SPEAR is a family of air-launched weapons under development by MBDA UK for the Royal Air Force's Select Precision Effects At Range (SPEAR) Capability 3, or SPEAR 3 programme, from which the system als…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEAR_3
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — A spear is a polearm consisting of a shaft, usually of wood, with a pointed head. The head may be simply the sharpened end of the shaft itself, as is the case with fire hardened spears, or it may be m…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spear
+ 3 more evidence sources
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Claim 9: “Spears was mentioned in the March 2023 report authored by New York Times sportswriter Billy Witz.”
CORROBORATED
Multiple sources confirm Kai Spears was mentioned in a March 2023 report written by NYT sportswriter Billy Witz.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The KAI T-50 Golden Eagle (Korean: 골든이글) is a family of advanced, supersonic, South Korean jet trainers, light combat aircraft, light strike fighters and multirole light fighters developed by Korea Ae…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KAI_T-50_Golden_Eagle
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — SPEAR is a family of air-launched weapons under development by MBDA UK for the Royal Air Force's Select Precision Effects At Range (SPEAR) Capability 3, or SPEAR 3 programme, from which the system als…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPEAR_3
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Ronnie William Arneill (born February 19, 1981), better known by his ring name Shawn Spears, is a Canadian professional wrestler and trainer. He is signed to WWE, where he performs on the NXT brand an…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shawn_Spears
+ 3 more evidence sources
info Disclaimer: This analysis is generated by AI and should be used as a starting point for critical thinking, not as definitive truth. Claims are verified against publicly available sources. Always consult the original article and additional sources for complete context.