Canwest Global Communications Corp. has dropped its libel suit against B.C.-based online magazine The Tyee, the site reports.
The suit was in relation to Dec. 2007 opinion piece written by regular Tyee columnist Rafe Mair. The column, about two Vancouver Province cartoonists, contained a factual error. Mair wrote that the cartoonists had been “let go,” but in fact they had been offered new positions (or a buy-out) after they were told their cartoons would no longer be regularly published by the paper.
The Tyee later pulled the
article from the site and then published a correction and an apology, written by Tyee
editor David Beers.
According to the blog post announcing Canwest’s dropping of the suit, “the Tyee’s tracking of visitor traffic showed that many times more readers saw the apologies than read the original article.”
As a part of the settlement, the Tyee is “paying legal costs to date” and making “a modest charitable contribution in
the name of the Pacific Newspaper Group.”
“We’re glad to have the suit behind us,” said Beers, in the post. “It frees us to
focus on producing the best journalism possible during a very busy
political season.”
