Vanity Fair
Huffington Post’s spokesman is blasting Vanity Fair for running a long story about the lawsuit filed by political consultants Peter Daou and James Boyce, who claim they played a critical role in Huffington Post’s creation. Mario Ruiz calls it “a nonstory” and says it should have been killed.
Huffington Post spokesman Mario Ruiz’s response to Vanity Fair’s story
It’s a great story — if you read it backwards. At the end of the article, the writer takes apart Boyce and Daou’s case piece by piece, leaving it in tatters — and rendering everything that has come before it pointless. The only question is, why, when the writer’s own reporting makes it clear that there is no there there, Vanity Fair not only went ahead and published this nonstory but decided to promote it on the cover? The proper response would have been to kill it. And, as we’ve said before, it defies reason and human nature, if they really believed they had created the Huffington Post, that they would wait six years before speaking up. At some point over the last 72 months, they would have contacted us to complain or asked us to credit them somewhere on the site or insisted on getting stock. Something. Anything! But they didn’t, because they know that they have absolutely no claim to ownership.
I represent Peter Daou and James Boyce. Please find below my statement regarding the Vanity Fair story about my clients’ litigation against the Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington and Ken Lerer:
The Huffington Post has now attacked Vanity Fair for publishing “Huffing and Puffing.” It is no surprise that Arianna Huffington, Ken Lerer and the Huffington Post wish that Vanity Fair had killed the story, which details my clients’ significant involvement in the creation of the Huffington Post. My clients look forward to having the chance to litigate their claims on the merits in court, and have no interest in litigating the reporting and publishing decisions made by Vanity Fair or other journalists and editors.
Partha P. Chattoraj
Markowitz & Chattoraj LLP
> Calderone: Story doesn’t cover much new ground regarding the suit
