Atlanta Progressive News responds to attack

‘’Matthew Cardinale, editor of Atlanta Progressive News, took issue with a blog post I wrote that criticized articles on his website concerning candidates in the mayor’s race. I admit I was somewhat harsh, but I feel my points were valid. Still, in the spirit of journalistic goodwill, we’re giving Cardinale the opportunity to respond. (For the record, we’ve trimmed his letter for the sake of space and relevance — and I added my own annotations.) Enjoy:

In a post entitled, “Where Mary, indeed?,” writer Scott Henry makes a number of false, unsubstantiated, defamatory, unprofessional and vicious statements regarding me and my publication, the Atlanta Progressive News.

The relevant text is as follows:

“The latest negative tidbit to surface is a weird piece of innuendo proffered by the Atlanta Progressive News, which is something of a far-left blog masquerading as a media outlet. Acting as an apparent proxy for the Norwood campaign, APN has cluttered e-mail inboxes with a piece insinuating that (Kasim) Reed, in his capacity as an attorney, once battled the NAACP on behalf of Cracker Barrel restaurants.

The ‘article,’ like much of APN’s output — including several attack pieces previously written about Lisa Borders — falls so far short of basic journalistic standards that it scarcely bears notice. Still, another local blogger who also works as an attorney was so offended by the lousy legal analysis she found in the APN piece that she felt compelled to post a point-by-point rebuttal.”

Let me go through and respond to his statements individually.

1. First of all, APN’s article was not innuendo, it was factual. If anything, it’s Henry’s post (and previous posts he’s written on other topics) that are characterized by innuendo. It is a fact that Reed, in his capacity as an attorney, once battled the NAACP on behalf of Cracker Barrel restaurants.

According to the federal database, PACER, Reed absolutely was an attorney, did represent Cracker Barrel, and on the other side was the NAACP, which both filed amicus briefs on behalf of a class of workers and helped organize this and a series of legal cases pursued against Cracker Barrel at the same time.

Now, some could argue that Cracker Barrel is entitled to a legal defense, or that Reed was just doing his job, etc., but that does not change the fact that he “in his capacity as an attorney, once battled the NAACP on behalf of Cracker Barrel.” Henry’s failure to back up his statement also means that his comment is the one that is innuendo, but it is also false.

From Scott: I described the article as “innuendo” because, in referencing a 1999 case in which Reed was one of many attorneys working on behalf of Cracker Barrel, Cardinale points out that the restaurant chain “historically would neither serve Black customers nor employ homosexuals.” But the case in question had nothing to do with alleged civil rights violations; it was a worker’s comp case dealing with employee overtime. ’’