{"id":13501,"date":"2016-03-30T08:03:52","date_gmt":"2016-03-30T15:03:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/nfl-demands-retraction-of-new-york-times-concussion-story\/"},"modified":"2016-03-30T08:03:52","modified_gmt":"2016-03-30T15:03:52","slug":"nfl-demands-retraction-of-new-york-times-concussion-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/nfl-demands-retraction-of-new-york-times-concussion-story\/","title":{"rendered":"NFL demands retraction of New York Times concussion story"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK<\/strong> \u2014 The NFL has demanded The New York Times retract a story that called the league\u2019s concussion research flawed and likened the NFL\u2019s handling of head trauma to the tobacco industry\u2019s response to the dangers of cigarettes.<\/p>\n

In a letter from its law firm to the general counsels of the newspaper and obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday, the league said it was defamed by the Times. The NFL added the story published last Thursday did not \u201cpresent a shred of evidence to support its thesis that the NFL intentionally concealed concussion research data.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NFL also said it will \u201cmore broadly reserve all of the league\u2019s rights and remedies,\u201d a veiled threat of legal action.<\/p>\n

Times sports editor Jason Stallman said, \u201cWe see no reason to retract anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe NFL apparently objects to our reporting that the league had ties to the tobacco industry,\u201d Stallman added. \u201cBut, as the article noted, a co-owner of the Giants, Preston R. Tisch, also partly owned a leading cigarette company, Lorillard, and was a board member of both the Tobacco Institute and the Council for Tobacco Research, two entities that played a central role in misusing science to hide the risks of cigarettes. Also, the NFL and the tobacco industry shared lobbyists, lawyers and consultants.\u201d<\/p>\n

In its letter, signed by league attorney Brad Karp, the NFL said not only that the story did not establish any meaningful ties to the tobacco industry, but that the headline was false and incendiary, and that a graphic attached to the story was misleading.<\/p>\n

An NFL search of 14 million documents from the tobacco litigation archives found \u201csignificant connections\u201d between the Times and the tobacco industry, the letter said, calling those connections \u201cfar more concrete than the phantom connections contrived by the Times purporting to tie the NFL to the tobacco industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Times story \u2014 its lead item on the front page \u2014 revealed that some concussions that occurred in the NFL were omitted from the league\u2019s studies, despite NFL claims to the contrary.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe league has always maintained that the studies were based on a data set that included every concussion that was diagnosed by a team doctor,\u201d Stallman said. \u201cIn fact, our reporting showed that more than 100 such concussions \u2014 including some sustained by star players \u2014 were not included in the data set, resulting in inaccurate findings. \u201c<\/p>\n

But the NFL\u2019s letter stresses that the fact the studies relied on data that were not a complete count of all concussions in the league was \u201crepeatedly and expressly disclosed in the studies themselves.\u201d It also accuses the Times of implying to its readers that the newspaper uncovered \u201ca secret and nefarious plot by the league to suppress relevant data and manipulate the test results in a manner learned through the league\u2019s \u2018ties\u2019 to Big Tobacco …\u201d<\/p>\n

The NFL said the research the Times focused on forms no part of the current work by the league\u2019s head, neck and spine committee.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP NFL website: www.pro32.ap.org and www.twitter.com\/AP_NFL<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 The NFL has demanded The New York Times retract a story that called the league\u2019s concussion research<\/a> flawed and likened the NFL\u2019s handling of head trauma to the tobacco industry\u2019s response to the dangers of cigarettes. In a letter from its law firm to the general counsels of the newspaper and obtained […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-13501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13501\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13501"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=13501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}